Labour MPs want Chelsea and Everton owners sanctioned

Members of the British Parliament from the Labour Party have called for more Russian oligarchs to be targeted by sanctions, including the Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, whose USM company is a major backer of Everton.

Margaret Hodge MP said that the sanctions are “too narrow in defining the individuals it covers” and that of a list of 35 oligarchs drawn up by the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, only 13 would be covered.

“Abramovich, Usmanov, [Gennady] Timchenko or [Oleg] Deripaska would escape,” she said. “Will the Prime Minister look again at the sanctions regime? So that in the words of the foreign secretary, “Nothing is off the table?’ ”

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, refused three times on Sky News to deny that Abramovich, 55, could be sanctioned in future. “Viewers can be assured that we have more individuals that we will target in the event of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” she said.

“We have more individuals on our list who we are ready to sanction,” Truss later told LBC radio. “Nobody is off the table.”

Those sanctioned would have their assets in the UK frozen, be banned from entering the country and would not be allowed to do any business with British individuals and entities.

Should that happen to Abramovich, it would mean, at the least, that he would not be able to put any more money into Chelsea via his company Fordstam but it should not prevent the club from continuing to operate.

A source close to Abramovich, who now has Israeli and Portuguese citizenship, told The Times that the Chelsea owner, who bought the club in 2003, was not involved in politics and had not done anything that would make him liable to sanctions