Chelsea might soon face a big problem with their player transfers. The Premier League’s boss, Richard Masters, gave an update about checking into Chelsea’s money matters when Roman Abramovich was the boss.
Abramovich was the owner of Chelsea from 2003 until 2022. The UK government sanctioned him after some political issues.
Because of this, Abramovich was told he couldn’t manage Chelsea anymore after Russia invaded Ukraine.
When Todd Boehly and his group took charge in May 2022, they found some missing money reports from when Abramovich was in charge.
Newspapers like The Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that secret papers showed Abramovich might have used hidden companies to pay agents and friends that helped Chelsea.
If these payments, worth millions of pounds, were not properly declared, they might have broken financial rules.
In July 2023, Europe’s soccer body, UEFA, fined Chelsea €10 million for not giving complete financial information between 2012 and 2019.
But now the Premier League is looking deeper into this. They want to see if these hidden payments had to do with player transfers. Chelsea could get a fine, lose points in the league, or even be banned from buying new players.
Masters told a radio station: “We’re looking at old issues here.”
“It’s tricky because the current Chelsea team is talking about things that happened with the old owners.”
“I can say the investigation is almost done. But until it ends, I can’t say what will happen next.”