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- Club made UK£47.5m of payments over seven-year period
- Payments allowed club to secure major signings and facilitated success
- New owners discovered the transactions during takeover
The Premier League has fined Chelsea UK£10.75 million (US$14.3 million) for secret payments to players, agents and other intermediaries worth UK£47.5 million (US$63.3 million) during Roman Abramovich’s spell as owner.
The London club has also received a suspended one-year transfer ban and an immediate nine-month ban on signing youth players but has avoided the prospect of a points deduction that would have derailed attempts to qualify for the Uefa Champions League.
It is understood that the Football Association (FA) is close to completing its own investigation into the matter, but there is no indication that it will impose immediate sporting sanctions. The Times says the most likely outcome will be a fine of around UK£10 million (US$13.3 million).
The payments, made between 2011 and 2018, coincided with a major spell of success for Chelsea. During this period, the club won three Premier League titles, the Uefa Champions League and the Uefa Europa League and was able to sign some of the best players in the league, including Belgian star Eden Hazard. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on any of the part of the players involved.
However, the Premier League said Chelsea’s voluntary admission of the 74 charges following the 2022 takeover by a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital and its full cooperation were significant mitigating factors when deciding the appropriate punishment. It was also satisfied that no financial rules were broken as a result of the deception.
“These payments were not disclosed to the football regulatory authorities at the time, including the Premier League,” the league said in a statement. “The payments were made for the benefit of Chelsea FC and should have been treated as having been made by the club. The club has also accepted, among other things, that the making of these payments, as well as the failure to disclose them to the league, constituted a breach of the requirement to act in good faith towards the league.
“The Premier League assessed a series of recalculations of the club’s historical financial submissions which took into account the payments made for the benefit of Chelsea FC. Importantly, having undertaken that assessment, the Premier League Board was satisfied that in no scenario would the club have breached the league’s profitability and sustainability Rules (PSR) during the relevant periods, had the relevant payments been properly included in the club’s historical financial submissions.”
Chelsea previously served a transfer ban during the 2019/20 season after Fifa, soccer’s global governing body, deemed that the club had breached regulations relating to the signing of players under the age of 18. This two-window suspension, however, was halved to just a single window.
Both Nottingham Forest and Everton have been docked points for breaching financial rules in recent seasons, while an investigation into Manchester City’s finances is ongoing. The club were originally charged with 115 breaches of Premier League financial rules in February 2023.
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