ABRAMOVICH ‘SECRET STAKE’ IN RIVAL STARS

roMAN ABrAMoVICH is facing questions over his involvement in thirdparty ownership after a BBC investigation revealed the Chelsea owner previously held secret investments in players not owned by his club. The russian held the economic rights to the players through a company based in the British Virgin Islands and one of them — Peruvian winger Andre Carrillo — played against Chelsea in two Champions League ties in 2014. Abramovich’s involvement in the banned practice of TPo through an offshore company called Leiston Holdings will place more scrutiny on the business dealings of a man who has invested almost £2billion since buying Chelsea in 2003. That includes a spending spree of £230million this summer alone. The Premier League outlawed third-party ownership in 2008 following West Ham’s controversial loan signings of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, but it was not banned by FIFA until 2015, the year after Abramovich’s player turned out against the Stamford Bridge side. Carrillo played in two Champions League group matches for Sporting Lisbon against Chelsea in 2014, both of which were won by Abramovich’s club. Leiston also owned stakes in two other Sporting players — Gael Etock, who played for the club between 2012 and 2013, and Valentin Viola who was in the squad between 2012 and 2016. A spokeswoman for Abramovich stressed no rules of regulations were broken. Abramovich’s involvement in Leiston has emerged after a leak of banks’ so-called ‘suspicious activity reports’ — dubbed the FinCEN Files — was obtained by BBC’s Panorama. In December 2016, a Suspicious Activity report was filed by a bank about Abramovich. It identified more than $1bn of ‘suspicious payments involving offshore shell companies’ — firms functioning only to manage the money put in them. The SAr said many of the shell companies were ‘owned by roman

Abramovich… one of russia’s most powerful oligarchs with close ties to Moscow & Vladimir Putin’. Among the transactions were a series of nine payments from a Cypriot company. This money was split between four other companies before $156m ended up in Leiston Holdings. Leiston became the subject of public attention in 2018, when it was revealed by German website Der Spiegel, as part of the Football Leaks investigation, to be an investment vehicle for TPo. The BBC claimed yesterday that both the company in Cyprus and Leiston Holdings are roman Abramovich companies. Chelsea declined to comment.