Not Putin’s ‘cashier’: billionaire Roman Abramovich denies buying Chelsea Football Club for Russian leader
- The businessman is suing British journalist Catherine Belton and publisher HarperCollins over a book about Putin’s rise to power
- Abramovich’s lawyer says the book alleges that the billionaire bought Chelsea FC under the Russian leader’s orders as a vehicle to corrupt the West
In the 2020 book, British journalist Catherine Belton chronicles Putin’s rise to power and how many of his associates from the former Soviet spy services rose to positions of wealth and influence after he won the top Kremlin job in 1999.
A lawyer for Abramovich told the court that passages in the book Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West, published by HarperCollins, were clearly defamatory. Abramovich is suing both HarperCollins and Belton.
The hearing is intended to determine what a reasonable and ordinary reader would understand the allegedly defamatory statements to mean. Those disputed statements will then form the basis of the defamation trial.
“The claimant is described in the book as Putin’s cashier and the custodian of Kremlin slush funds,” Hugh Tomlinson, a lawyer for Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, told the High Court about the book.