Background and career
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich (born 24 October 1966) is a Russian business oligarch and politician. He is the former owner of Chelsea, a Premier League football club in London. He has Russian, Portuguese and Israeli citizenship. Abramovich was Governor of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug from 2000 to 2008. Abramovich, including his family and affiliated related trusts, is the 371st richest person in the world with a net worth of $9.3 billion according to Forbes and the 444th richest person in the world with a net worth of $8.56 billion according to Bloomberg L.P. He is the fifth-richest person with Israeli citizenship. Abramovich enriched himself in the loans for shares scheme by Boris Yeltsin following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, acquiring a stake in Sibneft in partnership with Boris Berezovsky for approximately $100 million in 1995, well below market value. In 2005, he sold the stake to the Russian government under Vladimir Putin for $13 billion. Like most Russian oligarchs, Abramovich is considered to have a good relationship with Putin. As a result of these alleged relations, he has been subject to sanctions following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Abramovich allegedly now spends most of his time in Turkey. Abramovich's assets are held in a web of companies; many of his assets are based in Jersey.
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich was born on 24 October 1966 in Saratov, then part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union. His mother, Irina (1939–1967), was a music teacher who died of sepsis following a botched illegal abortion when Abramovich was one year old. His father, Aaron Abramovich Leibovich (1937‑1969), worked in the economic council of the Komi ASSR and was crushed to death when a crane collapsed on him when Roman was three years old. Both parents were of Jewish descent. Roman's maternal grandparents were Ukrainian Jews Vasily Mikhailenko, who converted to Judaism, and Faina Borisovna Grutman. Early in the Second World War, just before the Nazi invasion, Abramovich's mother, then aged three, fled with her family to Saratov from Kyiv. Some of their relatives who remained in Kyiv were among the 33,771 Jews murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in September 1941 at Babi Yar. Roman's paternal grandparents, Nachman Leibovich and Toybe (Tatyana) Stepanovna Abramovich, were Belarusian Jews. They lived in Belarus and, after the Russian Revolution, moved to Tauragė, Lithuania, where the family name took the Lithuanian spelling Abramavičius. In 1940, during the occupation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union (USSR), shortly before Operation Barbarossa, the Soviets carried out the "clearing of the anti‑Soviet, criminal and socially dangerous element", with entire families being sent to gulags in Siberia. Abramovich's grandfather, Nachman Leibovich, was a merchant and branded a "capitalist"; he was deported to an NKVD camp in the settlement of Resheti, Krasnoyarsk Territory, where he died in 1942. The father, mother and children – Leib, Abram and Aron (Arkady) – were held in separate gulags. In late 1969, having lost both parents, Abramovich was taken in as an orphan by his maternal aunt Lyudmila and her husband, Uncle Leib, in Ukhta, Komi Republic, near the Arctic Circle in northern Russia, where winter temperatures fall to −30 °C. Together with their cousins Natalya and Ida, the family of five shared a three‑room flat; his aunt and uncle slept on the sofa. His uncle Leib was the director of supplies at a local factory. Abramovich was described by one neighbour as a "polite and quiet boy, not rowdy like the others". Despite the harsh climate and the family's lack of money, he has said that his childhood was not unhappy, because "as a child you cannot tell the difference". Nevertheless, he always harboured a desire to leave Ukhta, which he considered "too small". At the age of eight, he attended School No 2 in Ukhta, but the following year he went to live with another uncle near Moscow, returning to Ukhta only for his final year of school. Abramovich left school at sixteen, worked as a mechanic and served in the Soviet Army in an artillery unit in Kirzhach. His monthly pay of 7 roubles was not enough, so he persuaded several military drivers to siphon off a few litres of petrol from their tanks on a regular basis, offering them a share of the proceeds from the sales together with ice cream and pastries. The unit's officers then bought the stolen petrol at half the market price. No one complained, for everyone profited from the arrangement. He studied for two years at the technical college in Ukhta and later at the Moscow Road Construction and Automobile Institute, but did not graduate from either. He subsequently attended the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas in Moscow. In 2000, he enrolled in a one-year correspondence course at Moscow State Law Academy.
After Mikhail Gorbachev allowed for greater openness to entrepreneurship under perestroika, Abramovich began selling plastic ducks from a stall in Moscow, eventually moving to perfumes and deodorants. He and his first wife, Olga, set up a company making dolls. He started and liquidated at least 20 companies in various sectors. Within a few years, his wealth spread from oil trading to pig farms. He also traded in timber, sugar, food stuffs, and other products. In June 1992, aged 25, Abramovich was arrested and briefly imprisoned on charges of theft of government property for allegedly stealing 55 tankers of diesel fuel, worth 3.8 million rubles, from the Ukhta Oil Refinery. Abramovich allegedly used forged documents to intercept a train carrying the fuel in Moscow and redirect the shipment to a military base, where the diesel was then sold. Despite the seriousness of the charges, Abramovich was not ultimately prosecuted. Lawyers later claimed the incident was a misunderstanding, and the case was dropped after the oil refinery was compensated for its losses.
Abramovich wanted to get involved in the privatisation of Russian assets and had the idea to combine a refinery with an oil drilling business. He was able to get Petr Aven, the president of Alfa-Bank, to organize a meeting with Boris Berezovsky, who had connections with Boris Yeltsin, on a yacht in the Caribbean, in either 1993 or 1994. Yeltsin was organizing the loans for shares scheme; in exchange for helping Yeltsin get elected in the 1996 Russian presidential election, businessmen would be offered stakes in Soviet assets for a tiny fraction of their market value. Abramovich also thought he needed physical protection, and wanted to ask Berezovsky for advice. In return for Abramovich agreeing to provide Berezovsky with funds he required for his TV company ORT, Berezovsky agreed he would use his influence to assist in the creation of Sibneft. Two days before the decision over which companies should be included in the sale of companies by the state, Berezovsky visited Alfred Koch, head of the State Committee for State Property Management, who added Sibneft to the list. With the help of Badri Patarkatsishvili, a friend of Berezovsky, other possible bidders were paid off or received favors so that Abramovich could win the auction. In August 1995, Boris Yeltsin decreed the creation of Sibneft, with Abramovich and Berezovsky as top executives. Abramovich acquired a controlling interest in Sibneft in a rigged auction, for well below market value. The purchase was handled via an offshore company, Runicom Ltd., with Russian affiliates. As head of Sibneft, Abramovich reduced taxes by hired disabled workers and setting up companies in the tax havens of Kalmykia and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. In 2001, Sibneft was accused of underpaying taxes but the case was dismissed without charges. Abramovich sold Sibneft to the Russian government for $13 billion in 2005.
After privatisation, the "aluminium wars" led to murders of smelting plant managers, metals traders, and journalists as groups battled for control of the industry. Abramovich was initially hesitant to enter into the aluminium business, claiming that "every three days someone was murdered in that business". In early 2000, due to the wars, a major strike action, and the rise of Vladimir Putin, David and Simon Reuben sold their aluminium assets to Roman Abramovich in a $575 million deal. In February 2000, Abramovich met with aluminium oligarchs Iskander Makhmudov, Oleg Deripaska, and Lev Chernoi with a proposal to consolidate the aluminium business in Russia and end the wars, with a major investment by Abramovich. At a meeting at the Balchug Kempinski in Moscow that lasted until 5:00AM, the companies all agreed to merge and form Rusal. Along with SUAL Group, the two companies controlled 90% of the Russian aluminum market. In two transactions in 2004, Abramovich sold his 50% stake in Rusal to Deripaska for £1.8 billion, making him the richest person in the world under the age of 40.
In 2011, Berezovsky filed a civil suit, Berezovsky v Abramovich, in the High Court of Justice in London. He accused Abramovich of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract. The suit sought over £3 billion in damages. In May 2001, Patarkatsishvili asked Abramovich to pay US$1.3 billion (€925 million) to Berezovsky. He agreed to pay this amount on the basis that it would be the final request for payment by Berezovsky and that he and Patarkatsishvili would cease to associate themselves publicly with him and his business interests. However, Berezovsky said that the payment undervalued his interests, leading to the lawsuit. At a conversation between Abramovich and Berezovsky at Le Bourget airport in December 2000, secretly recorded by Patarkatsishvili, Berezovsky spoke of how they should "legalise" their aluminium business, and later claimed in court that he was an undisclosed shareholder in the aluminium assets and that "legalisation" in this case meant to make his ownership "official". In response, Abramovich stated that they cannot legalise because the other party in the 50–50 joint venture (Rusal) would need to do the same, in a supposed reference to his business partner Oleg Deripaska. Besides Deripaska, references are made to several other players in the aluminium industry at the time that would have had to "legalise" their stake. Abramovich's lawyers later claimed that "legalisation" meant structuring protection payments to Berezovsky to ensure they complied with Western anti-money laundering regulations. On 31 August 2012, the High Court dismissed the lawsuit. The High Court judge stated that because of the nature of the evidence, the case hinged on whether to believe Berezovsky or Abramovich's evidence. The judge found Berezovsky to be "an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes", whereas Abramovich was seen as "a truthful, and on the whole, reliable witness". It later emerged that the stepson of the judge in the case, Elizabeth Gloster, was paid almost £500,000 to represent Abramovich as a barrister early in the case. Her stepson's involvement was alleged to be more than had been disclosed. Berezovsky stated, "Sometimes I have the impression that Putin himself wrote this judgment". Gloster declined to comment.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
