First blood for Abramovich over allegations he bought Chelsea FC ‘on Putin’s orders’

ROMAN ABRAMOVICH has claimed victory in the first round of a libel claim over allegations that he bought Chelsea Football Club on Vladimir Putin’s orders.

The oligarch is suing the journalist Catherine Belton over her book Putin’s People: How The KGB Took Back Russia And Then Took On The West, which was published by Harpercollins last April.

Ms Belton, a former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, said Mr Abramovich “was acting under Kremlin direction” when he bought the Premier League club for £150million in 2003.

Hugh Tomlinson QC, his barrister, told the High Court in July that readers would conclude that Mr Abramovich “had been used as the acceptable face of a corrupt and dangerous regime” and had a corrupt relationship with President Putin, acting as his ‘cashier’.”

However, Andrew Caldecott QC, representing Ms Belton and Harpercollins, pointed out that the reference to Mr Abramovich being a cashier was “in quotation marks, suggesting it is someone else’s observation”.

Mr Caldecott told the court that the book “records a firm denial from a ‘person close to Abramovich’” that he bought Chelsea on Mr Putin’s orders. Yesterday, Mrs Justice Tipples ruled that readers would understand Mr Abramovich to be “under the control of President Vladimir Putin and, on the directions of President Putin and the Kremlin, he has had to make the fortune from his business empire available for the use of President Putin and his regime”.

She also said an ordinary reader would understand the book to allege “the claimant purchased Chelsea Football Club in 2003 at the direction of President Putin so that Russia could gain acceptance and influence in the UK”. She also ruled that a reader would understand that the billionaire moved to New York on Mr Putin’s directions to influence the family of Donald Trump, the former US president.

Mr Abramovich’s spokesman said he welcomed the judgment. Harpercollins and Ms Belton are also being sued for libel by Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft over the book.

However, in a second judgment Mrs Justice Tipples ruled that three of the four allegations were not defamatory.

A spokesman for the publishing house said it was pleased with the judge’s ruling and that “several serious meanings in Mr Abramovich’s claim have also been rejected”.