Money Stall
Roman Abramovich's Fordstam account still has two billion frozen pounds in it, and the same questions remain 16 months after the Chelsea sale.
One cheer for Martyn Zeigler, who remains the only person in corporate or state media who regularly checks in on the status of the money the UK government keeps frozen in the Fordstam account, 16 months after said government forced Roman Abramovich to sell Chelsea FC.
That cheer ends abruptly in the second sentence of his most recent article. Starting there, Zeigler raises more questions than he answers (including a few of the seven I asked on the day the sale closed); and his uncritical relaying of several pieces of information reminds us that while he may be the only person in corporate or state media writing on the topic, he is still a person in corporate or state media.
Zeigler's second sentence:
"Mike Penrose, who runs the foundation, said the former Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, has agreed to the cash being released, but the government’s insistence that every penny must be spent inside Ukraine is holding up the funding of projects."
Roman Abramovich agreed to the cash being released. Well, that's nice of him! But, wait... Abramovich is part of this process? Did he mitzvah the cash transfer during a courtesy call with Penrose, or is he somehow required to sign off on the expropriation-by-release that Penrose is managing at the UK government's behest?
Could Roman Abramovich scupper the entire scheme by simply not going along with the plans to disburse the money from the sale he was forced to make, under a sanction regime that is still under legal challenge in multiple national and continental jurisdictions?
That's just the first half of the second sentence. The second half links well with something Ziegler writes a few lines down.
"The foundation, however, wants to fund projects to help refugees outside Ukraine, and also countries threatened by famine because of the wheat shortage caused by Russia’s invasion."
Neither the UK government nor Zeigler should be surprised by this conflict, as Penrose has never limited his plans for Chelsea's money to a single country. Penrose, quoted in Sky, 16 May 2022:
"The foundation created from the sale of Chelsea could have an enormous effect on the lives of millions of people, in Ukraine, and other conflict-affected areas... The only request I received was to use my experience and contacts to create a Foundation that would have the greatest impact on conflict affected people in Ukraine, and in other countries affected by conflict across the globe."
Unless Sky omitted a crucial modifier - "this" conflict, "the Ukraine" conflict, "Putin's" conflict - Penrose said then what Penrose is saying now. His ambition was never to disburse the money from the Chelsea sale to the victims of Russia's war against Ukraine: it was to use that money as seed capital for a larger "humanitarian" philanthropic endeavor, consistent with his past work at UNICEF and his current set up in the sustainability-industrial complex. But reading Ziegler's article, you'd think this is a new wrinkle, or perhaps one party trying to change the terms of the arrangement, contributing to the latest delay.
Remember, too, that Abramovich offered - in March 2022 - to sell the club and distribute the entirety of the proceeds to victims of the war. That offer was tacitly rejected when the UK government froze his assets, including the operation of Chelsea Football Club, and forced the sale. And now here we are.
Next, Ziegler quotes Penrose again:
"I’m at a loss to know why we cannot get on with it and the money is still stuck in the bank. We have offered the government an observer’s seat on the board with the power of veto for anything that would contravene sanctions. There are projects we could fund immediately if we could just have the clearance.”
Which government? Part of the delay and a source of practical obstacles to the disbursement of the funds are the overlapping and, at times, conflicting sanctions regimes of the UK and the European Union towards entities associated with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Even a humanitarian expenditure that helped victims of the war who happened to live on the wrong side of a line on the map would violate the sanctions that, like nearly all such, do not distinguish between the state and the people.
Knowing this, Penrose said in a remarkable July 2023 op-ed (that I, admittedly, found and read for the first time in the course of writing this article) in Ziegler's own newspaper, "I can assure you that neither I, nor our esteemed board, wishes to go to jail."
That quote points to a question that runs through the entirety of Ziegler's most recent article: Who, or what, is this foundation?
Penrose veers towards Trumpian use of adjectives when describing his partners at the foundation that has no name, no web presence, no (detectable) Charity Commission registration: "esteemed board," "most respected humanitarians," “absolute experts,” "world leaders," "one of the world’s leading law firms," "some of the best fund managers on the planet.”
That is to say:
All of which leads us back to where I was, in May 2022:
What are the retainers, salaries and honoraria of everyone involved in the foundation? What are the fund management fees being charged by the law firms and fund managers Penrose is bringing into the process? What are the annual administrative and operational costs of the foundation?
What are the final transactions in the chain of money that starts with the foundation and ends with goods or services “on the ground” in Ukraine? Is the money being used to buy food and water? Medical and sanitation supplies? Providing shelter or relocation services? Is the money actually buying these products, or funding service contracts to organizations that process and distribute products bought by other organizations?
Who / what are the other sources of money coming into the foundation?
What guardrails will ensure that no money is used to buy weapons or fund combatants?
And what I said and asked in January 2023:
[T]o think that my biggest concern at the time was that the money would mostly end up flowing to well-connected NGOs and defense contractors. Was that being naive or cynical?
When people tell you who they are, believe them
It seems beyond strange that I'd be counselling people to take governments, politicians, the media and NGO careerists at face value. But from Libs of TikTok to Joe Rogan's "Jamie, pull that up," when you can just go to the tape and listen to what people say and observe what they do, there's no reason not to believe them.
The UK government showed, in spring 2022, how quickly they can move when they want to.
Mike Penrose has been the most consistent party in this whole situation. He could certainly be more transparent, but there's nothing he's saying now that should surprise us if we've listened to him for the last 16 months.
If, when the UK government releases the Fordstam funds to his foundation, he acts in accordance with those stated plans - for good or ill - the only people who will be surprised are those who have chosen not to listen to him. And if he acts contra those plans, I don't want to hear anything from anyone who has allowed him to obfuscate so many key details, even as he's been consistent on so many of his macro intentions.
The media has shown, over the last 18 months, how doggedly they can pursue a story when they want to. They can dig through corporate registrations, tax filings, link analysis, leaks and hacks to map out Roman Abramovich's shell companies, tax havens, real estate holdings and offshore bank accounts, including those in the names of his family members.
But they have no interest in investigating why £2.5 billion remain frozen in the same account that Roman Abramovich used to operate Chelsea Football Club, 16 months on.
Other than Martyn Zeigler, none are even interested in straight-on reporting of what some of the principles in that situation have to say, nor even giving the standard midnight log entry from thousands of naval vessels at sea and in port: NSTR. Nothing significant to report.
Except that sometimes, "nothing significant to report" is, itself, significant and worth reporting. Sixteen months of "nothing significant" regarding £2.5 billion from the forced sale of an expropriated asset with a global market owned by a sanctioned individual during an escalating war seems significant to me.
Probably why I'm on Substack.
