The Chelsea Football Club owner, who has
been accused in Britain of being a close ally of Russian warmonger Putin, is
apparently asking for huge loans from his celebrity friends to maintain his
staff, who are rumoured to be costing him £600,000-a-week.
Page Six alleges that Rush Hour director
Ratner is among those Abramovich has asked, as well as other contacts in
Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The oligarch is also said to have approached the
Rothschild family after his assets in Britain and the US were seized last
month. No one is thought to have agreed to give him the money.
A source told the website: ‘Roman is asking
some of his closest powerful friends to let him borrow $1million. He is saying
he has never missed payroll for his staff, which is $750,000 a week, and with
his assets frozen, he can’t pay his people.
‘He has reached out to Hollywood producer
and director Brett Ratner and the Rothschild family, among many others, for
money, but – while they are good friends with Roman – they have not agreed to
give him money, because either they do not have that in liquid cash, or
moreover it is not clear what are the repercussions under international law.’
Ratner declined to comment when approached
by Page Six, and the Rothschilds could not be reached.
Abramovich now cannot sell any of his UK
assets including Chelsea without a special licence that can only be granted by
ministers and the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI). Any cash
he holds in the UK are now frozen in accounts if he has not been able to
transfer funds abroad, while his shares on the London Stock Exchange cannot be
sold and will pay no dividends.
But despite these serious allegations, the
law doesn’t allow ministers to take away Chelsea, properties, yachts, planes,
shares and cash.
Currently the Government has powers to
freeze UK assets like houses, but it cannot seize them and put them to a
different use.
The rules in place prevent oligarchs from
renting out or selling property they own, hiring someone to clean it or even
paying a power company to connect it to the electricity supply or pay a bill.
The billionaire recently bought a
£264million Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner jet. The 50-seater aircraft is the world's
most expensive private jet with a base cost of £188million and a rumoured
£76million of additional equipment to the billionaire’s taste, Forbes reported,
citing industry sources.
He also owns a fleet of supercars valued at
more than £16million, believed to be in the UK. Among the high end vehicles are
a Porsche 911 GT1 Evo, a Ferrari FXX, a Aston Martin Vulcan and a Maserati MC12
Corsa.
The fleet also includes a Pagani Zonda R,
of which only 15 have ever been produced and come with a price tag of
£2.5million.
Abramovich has seven children from two of
his ex-wives. The eldest, Anna, 29, is a Columbia University philosophy
graduate who lives in New York, while Arkadiy, 27, is an industrial tycoon with
substantial oil and gas investments.
Sofia, 26, who lives in London and the
‘wild child’ of the family, recently posted a message on Instagram attacking
Putin for his invasion of Ukraine. Less is known about Arina, 20, and Ilya, 18,
or Aaron, 11 and Leah Lou, 7, who were both born in New York to his third wife,
Dasha.
It comes after the billionaire was
allegedly poisoned with a World War One chemical agent at peace talks, and even
felt so unwell that he reportedly asked the scientist examining him if he was
dying.
The Chelsea owner was suffering severe
symptoms after coming into contact with Chloropicrin or a low dosage of Novichok,
experts have claimed. Investigative journalist Christo Grozev, who led research
into the shocking incident, said a team of experts agreed the wartime chemical
was the most likely one used in the attack.
Abramovich and other peace negotiators suffered
debilitating symptoms including temporary blindness on a mission in early March
to Kyiv seeking an end to the war. Abramovich required hospital treatment in
Istanbul after flying to Turkey from the talks in Ukraine.
One theory for the alleged poisoning is
that hardliners close to Putin wanted to disrupt peace moves and prolong the
war.
In an interview, Grozov spoke in Russian to
tell Popular Politics YouTube channel that all the experts had agreed the most
likely source of their symptoms was Chloropicrin.
‘All the experts who communicated with
them, studied their photographs and carried out personal examinations,’ he
said. The experts ‘all said this was not a coincidence, not food poisoning, not
an allergy’.
He said: ‘They suggested this [Сhlorpicrin]
and other war agents. They agreed on one of them and disagreed on the others.
They also all agreed that the only way to detect the agent was to bring these
people to a laboratory, or to send their blood sample to a laboratory with
means to detect war agents.’
Novichok was used in the poisoning of GRU
double agent Sergei Skripal at his home in Salisbury, England, which also
hospitalised his daughter Yulia. The attack was seen as being by the GRU,
Russian military intelligence.
Novichok was also deployed to poison Putin
foe Alexei Navalny in Siberia, who needed lifesaving medical treatment in
Germany before returning to Russia where he was jailed on what his allies claim
are politically motivated charges.
It is understood the oligarch had been
involved in talks about securing humanitarian corridors to allow Ukrainians to
leave as well as bringing other countries to the negotiating table.
The WSJ reported it was believed the
suspected attack was orchestrated by hardliners in Russia who wanted to
sabotage the talks.