The Premier League is under mounting pressure to crack down on clubs after an investigation by the Guardian and international partners uncovered secret payments that raise questions about the financial affairs of Chelsea under their former owner – the billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich.
As experts warned that Chelsea could face a points deduction if found guilty of breaching spending rules, politicians and a senior executive at a rival club called for tougher oversight of football clubs.
Chelsea are the third top-flight club this year to face intense scrutiny over their compliance with rules designed to promote fair competition.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that the club may have benefited from tens of millions of pounds in payments routed through offshore vehicles belonging to Abramovich.
Beneficiaries appear to include the agent of the star player Eden Hazard, an associate of the title-winning manager Antonio Conte and Chelsea FC officials. Other payments appear to have been connected to the purchase of the players Willian and Samuel Eto’o.
The Premier League has already accused Manchester City of breaking rules, chiefly related to spending limits, issuing more than 100 charges against the club in February 2023. However, no resolution has been reached nine months later amid a protracted legal tussle between the two sides.
Everton, charged with breaking financial rules a month later, are expected to discover their fate sooner, with a judicial panel rumoured to be considering recommending a 12-point deduction. Everton and Manchester City are contesting the charges.
The Premier League must now decide whether it has sufficient evidence to charge Chelsea with breaking the rules. The Football Association is also investigating the west London club’s finances.
Clive Betts, a Labour MP who heads a cross-party parliamentary group on football, called on the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, to put pressure on football’s governing bodies to look into the findings in depth.
In a written question, he asked whether Frazer, whose department oversees sport, “believes that clubs which seek to circumvent the Premier League’s financial fair play (FFP) rules undermine the credibility of the competition and are guilty of cheating”.
Betts also asked whether Frazer intends to contact the Premier League in relation to the allegations and whether she accepts that a new football regulator must have sufficient resources and skills to identify breaches of FFP and hold clubs to account.
The government is to put a football governance bill before parliament next year, confirming the legislation that will create an independent regulator for the game.
A senior Tory said the regulator was needed to ensure proper oversight, with currently too much overlap between the clubs and governing bodies such as the Premier League, which is made up of the 20 clubs in the top division. “This [revelations about Chelsea’s finances] is another example as to why politicians are concerned about connections between football clubs and the people who regulate them,” said the source.
A senior executive at one top-flight club said they were becoming frustrated with the length of time it has taken to investigate alleged breaches of financial rules by other clubs. They said any punishment meted out to Everton was likely to be seen as a signal of how severe penalties could be at other clubs if they are found to have breached the rules, but said the case “seems to go on for ever” given that Everton are facing only one charge.
Kieran Maguire, football finance expert and author of The Price of Football, said: “There could be pressure from other clubs to take things further [if Chelsea are charged] given the extent of the report into these unusual offshore transactions.”
Details of payments made by companies owned by Abramovich, apparently to fund Chelsea FC business, came to light thanks to an international investigation known as Cyprus Confidential, a cache of 3.6m offshore records leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Germany’s Paper Trail Media, which shared access with the Guardian, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and other media.
Earlier this week, a Chelsea spokesperson said that the allegations “pre-date the club’s current ownership. They are based on documents which the club has not been shown and do not relate to any individual who is presently at the club.”
The spokesperson said that during the purchase of the club – by a consortium led by the US investor Todd Boehly – the buyers became aware of “potentially incomplete financial reporting concerning historical transactions during the club’s previous ownership.
“Immediately following the completion of the purchase, the club proactively self-reported these matters to all applicable football regulators. In accordance with the club’s ownership group’s core principles of full compliance and transparency the club has proactively assisted the applicable regulators with their investigations and will continue to do so.”
The Premier League declined to comment while its investigation is continuing. An FA spokesperson said: “We are investigating.”
