UK government imposes sanctions on Chelsea FC director Eugene Tenenbaum

theguardian.com:

The UK government has imposed sanctions on Chelsea football club director Eugene Tenenbaum in an attempt to freeze up to £10bn of assets linked to the club’s Russian oligarch owner, Roman Abramovich.

The UK said it was extending sanctions to Tenenbaum and David Davidovich, another close associate of Abramovich, because the oligarch had transferred billions of pounds of assets to the pair as Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Foreign Office said the sanctions would “freeze assets connected with the pair estimated to total up to £10bn – the largest asset freeze action in UK history”. The department said the asset freezes would “prevent these assets from being repatriated to Russia and used to fund Putin’s war machine”.

“We are tightening the ratchet on Putin’s war machine and targeting the circle of people closest to the Kremlin,” Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said. “We will keep going with sanctions until Putin fails in Ukraine. Nothing and no one is off the table.”

The UK said the sanctions were coordinated with Jersey, which yesterday froze £5.4bn of Abramovich’s assets.

Abramovich was subjected to UK sanctions on 10 March after ministers accused him of having “clear connections” to Putin’s regime and being among a group of rich Russian business people who had “blood on their hands”. He has denied having close links to Putin.

However, the UK has not seized any of Abramovich’s UK properties, whichinclude a £120m mansion on Kensington Palace Gardens just behind the royal palace. His family have amassed a UK property collection worth more than £250m, numbering about 70 homes, buildings and pieces of land. The UK is forcing him to sell Chelsea FC, which he bought in 2003 for about £140m.

Corporate filings show that Tenenbaum took