‘He’s just a well-known businessman’: Abramovic allowed to challenge sanctions in court – Reuters

Roman Abramovich, Russian businessman and former owner of Chelsea in London, is going to court to have sanctions lifted because of his close ties to Vladimir Putin during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Reuters writes about it.

Thus, journalists learned that Abramovich had filed a complaint against EU sanctions. Evaluation of the complaint should take place on Thursday, 14 June at the General Court of the European Union.

The billionaire’s lawyers will convince the judges that the EU sanctions against his wards are not justified, only because he is a well-known Russian businessman.

It should be noted that the first sanctions against Roman Abramovich appeared in the spring of 2022, immediately after the Russian Armed Forces invaded the territory of Ukraine. The first was in the UK: Abramovich’s assets were frozen there, and the businessman himself was banned from entering the country. After a while, the European Union also imposed sanctions against him.

The European Union later defended its actions by the fact that Abramovich was “a Russian oligarch with close ties to the President of the Russian Federation.” In Europe, they began to “freeze” his assets, during which it became known that the millionaire owns a large amount of real estate throughout the European Union. For example, in France alone, 12 houses, villas and flats were discovered and arrested.

Important

We add that due to the sanctions, Abramovich even had to sell the Chelsea football club, which he owned since 2003. This happened after the English Premier League (EPL) approved the sale of Chelsea to the consortium of American businessman Todd Boely. The ransom amount was $5.24 billion.