‘World’s most profitable football business’: Abramovich’s frozen Chelsea cash earns £175m

Proceeds are in a UK account amid a dispute about how the money should be used and a separate criminal investigation

Funds from Roman Abramovich’s sale of Chelsea FC have earned at least £175m in interest while locked in a UK bank account, new accounts show, leading one analyst to describe the company housing the frozen cash as “the most profitable football business in the world”.

Accounts for Fordstam, the company through which the billionaire Russian oligarch owned Chelsea, show that the proceeds of the sale completed in May 2022 have risen from £2.3bn to nearly £2.5bn.