Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich is reportedly asking his wealthy friends, including Hollywood director Brett Ratner, for £765,000 ($980,000) in loans to help him pay his employees after he left London and Washington sanctioned, US sources have claimed.
The Chelsea Football Club owner, who has been accused in the UK of being a close ally of Russian warmonger Putin, is apparently asking for huge loans from his celebrity friends to support his staff, which are said to be costing him £600,000 a week.
Page Six claims that Rush Hour director Ratner was among those who asked Abramovich, as well as other contacts in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The oligarch is also said to have approached the Rothschild family after his UK and US assets were confiscated last month. Nobody is said to have agreed to give him the money.
A source told the website: “Roman is asking some of his closest powerful friends to lend him $1 million. He says he’s never missed payroll for his employees, which is $750,000 a week, and since his assets are frozen he can’t pay his people.
“He has approached Hollywood producer and director Brett Ratner and the Rothschild family, among others, for money, but — despite being good friends with Roman — they have not agreed to give him money because they either do not have liquid funds, or moreover, it is not clear what the implications under international law are.’
Ratner declined comment when approached by Page Six and the Rothschilds could not be reached.
Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich is reportedly asking his wealthy friends, including Hollywood director Brett Ratner, for £765,000 ($980,000) in loans to help him pay his employees after he left London and Washington was sanctioned
The Chelsea Football Club owner, who has been accused in the UK of being a close ally of Russian warmonger Putin, is apparently asking for huge loans from his celebrity friends to support his staff, which are said to be costing him £600,000 a week
Abramovich made his fortune buying up state assets after the collapse of the Soviet Union and was one of the oligarchs who make up Russia’s wealthy elite. The West has imposed sanctions on them
Abramovich’s luxury lifestyle is under pressure from EU and UK sanctions
A superyacht said to be owned by Abramovich left a Turkish marina after the port’s operator turned the £430million vessel away over fears the company’s acceptance of a toll could run afoul of Britain’s sanctions on Russia
Roman Abramovich “was the TARGET of the peace talks ‘chocolate poisoning’ that temporarily blinded him and shed skin”
The lead investigator who uncovered Roman Abramovich’s poisoning said the chemical attack was a warning to the billionaire and others not to betray the Kremlin.
Christo Grozev, senior Russia investigator for the investigative news agency Bellingcat, said the billionaire oligarch should not die in the poisoning, which also affected two Ukrainian negotiators.
He told Times Radio: “The dose was not high enough to kill any of the three, the most likely target would have been Abramovich. And it kind of makes sense.
“I mean, he volunteered to play that role of (an) honest broker, but other oligarchs had … declared their certain independence from the Kremlin position and criticized the war.
“So it could well be seen as a red flag for them not to join the ranks of dissenters and not be too much of an honest broker.”
A source close to Volodymyr Zelensky told the Financial Times: “People went completely blind the next day.
“We have not identified the substance. I have no idea who is behind it [the attack] but it looks like Roman was the main goal.’
Abramovich can now not sell any of his UK assets, including Chelsea, without a special license that can only be granted by ministers and the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI). Any cash he holds in the UK is now frozen in accounts if he has not been able to transfer funds abroad, while his shares cannot be sold on the London Stock Exchange and do not pay dividends.
But despite these serious allegations, the law does not allow ministers to take away Chelsea, property, yachts, planes, shares and cash.
Currently, the government has the power to freeze UK assets, such as houses, but cannot confiscate them and use them elsewhere.
The rules in place prevent oligarchs from renting or selling properties they own, hiring someone to do the cleaning, or even paying an energy company to connect it to electricity or pay a bill.
The billionaire recently bought a £264million Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. The 50-seat plane is the world’s most expensive private jet with a base price of £188million and a reported £76million of additional equipment to suit the billionaire’s liking, Forbes reported, citing industry sources.
He also owns a fleet of supercars valued at more than £16million, which are believed to be based in the UK. High-end vehicles include a Porsche 911 GT1 Evo, a Ferrari FXX, an Aston Martin Vulcan and a Maserati MC12 Corsa.
The fleet also includes a Pagani Zonda R, of which just 15 were produced and are priced at £2.5million.
Abramovich has seven children by two of his ex-wives. The eldest, Anna, 29, is a philosophy graduate from Columbia University and lives in New York, while Arkadiy, 27, is a tycoon with sizeable oil and gas investments.
Sofia, 26, who lives in London and is the “wild child” of the family, recently posted a message on Instagram attacking Putin over 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 I chemical warfare agent during peace talks and even felt so unwell that he reportedly asked the scientist examining him if he was dying.
The Chelsea owner suffered severe symptoms after being exposed to chloropicrin or a low dose of novichok, experts have claimed. Investigative journalist Christo Grozev, who led research into the shocking incident, said a team of experts agreed the war chemical was most likely used in the attack.
Abramovich and other peace negotiators suffered debilitating symptoms, including temporary blindness, when they went to Kyiv on a mission in early March to seek an end to the war. Abramovich required hospital treatment in Istanbul after flying to Turkey from talks in Ukraine.
One theory behind the alleged poisoning is that Putin wanted to disrupt close hardliner peace movements and prolong the war.
The mansion was built in 1848 on land owned by the Crown Estate, who manage a vast portfolio of land and other assets on behalf of the monarchy
The tycoon also owns a three-story penthouse in Chelsea Waterfront valued at an estimated £22million
The Solaris is not as big as the Eclipse, a 533 foot ship. He previously owned at least five other colossal yachts, the most recent of which was the 162-foot Susurro, which changed hands around 2017
Roman Abramovich in Turkey just before the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks
In an interview, Grozov spoke in Russian to tell the Popular Politics YouTube channel that all experts agreed that the most likely cause of her symptoms was chloropicrin.
“All the experts who communicated with them studied their photos and conducted personal examinations,” he said. The experts “all said this was no fluke, no food poisoning, no allergy.”
He said: “You suggested that [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 prove the agent was to take these people to a lab or send their blood sample to a lab that has the means to detect war agents.”
Novichok was used in the poisoning of GRU double agent Sergei Skripal at his home in Salisbury, England, where his daughter Yulia was also hospitalized. The attack was believed to be by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
Novichok was also used to poison anti-Putin Alexei Navalny in Siberia, who required life-saving medical treatment in Germany before returning to Russia, where he was jailed on allegedly politically motivated charges.
The oligarch is understood to have been involved in talks to secure humanitarian corridors to allow Ukrainians to leave the country and bring other countries to the negotiating table.
The WSJ reported it believes the alleged attack was orchestrated by hardliners in Russia intent on sabotaging the talks.