Exiled oligarch denies making Chelsea purchase claims

The fugitive oligarch at the centre of the ‘Putin’s People’ defamation case has denied making key claims about Roman Abramovich’s £150million purchase of Chelsea FC. Abramovich, 54, is suing HarperCollins and former FT Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton over claims he bought the club in 2003 on the order of the Russian president: ‘Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West’. Belton quotes Sergei Pugachev – once dubbed ‘Putin’s Banker’ – as the source of…