These are difficult times at Goodison Park. Everton today suspended their relationship with Russian-owned sponsors USM, Megafon and Yota. All three companies are linked with Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born billionaire whose assets were frozen by the European Union in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
Usmanov is significantly higher up the oligarch food chain than Roman Abramovich. The 68-year-old was called one of Vladimir Putin’s “key enablers” last week by Layla Moran, a Liberal Democrat MP, who used parliamentary privilege to name 35 oligarchs in a list that also included the Chelsea owner. The EU described him as a “pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to [the Russian president].”
