FFP takes the simplistic view that if a club never spends more than the revenue streams permitted by FFP bring in a club will always be healthy financially. It took the view that clubs with existing debts had merely to be able to pay the interest on that debt without overspending to meet the demands of FFP. R A's loans to Chelsea were interest free and so there was never a danger of falling foul of the regulations. If he sells the club the only problem for the new owner and Chelsea would appear to be that R A has had to make these interest free loans to the club quite frequently to finance rebuilding to keep the club at its present level and the new owner might not be prepared to do this.
All this is strictly football finance and, I suspect, is of little interest to our government which is concerned with Russian holdings in the UK, the movement of capital and the functioning of the Russian economy to finance their war of aggression in the Ukraine. At the moment R A is not sanctioned by the UK any further as a result of the war than he was previously. The reason for this is unclear. Is it because he is a friend of our PM or is it because we are not convinced he is close to the Kremlin? In general the oligarchs profited from the 'privatisation' of Russian natural resources and assets in the aftermath of the disintegration of the soviet union. None of them woke up one morning to realise with astonishment that they had quite suddenly become billionaires. RA seems to have had a rather colourful business career but he appears to have acquired his controlling interest in Sibneft, a large oil company worth billions of dollars, in very shady circumstances, which suggests some powerful contacts. By the end of the 90s he was close to Yeltsin and in 2000 was the first to suggest Putin as Yeltsin's successor. In 1999 he was elected to the Russian Parliament and from 2000 to 2008 he was the governor of Chukotka. When he resigned in 2008 he was awarded the Order of Honour by the then president Medvedev, the very close associate of Putin.
All this is evidence of close association with the Kremlin and the question is whether his holdings outside Russia are in reality ways of of keeping wealth that the Kremlin can realise in western currencies in time of need or genuine investments by RA. Is Chelsea an example of soft influence to make it easier to realise other assets? Or is this kind of influence restricted to Abu Dhabi!!!! At present, Chelsea should be largely unaffected by such issues.
