Abramovich sues publisher over fugitive’s claims

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is to sue the Australian arm of HarperCollins over claims he bought the club on the orders of Vladimir Putin. The allegations are made in Catherine Belton’s book ‘Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took the West’. Belton quotes fugitive billionaire Sergei Pugachev, once dubbed ‘Putin’s Banker’ as the source of the claims but Abramovich maintains the allegations are untrue and damaging both to him and the club. Pugachev was discredited in…