Billionaire Abramovich sued by bank

A British-based bank is suing Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, his Sibneft oil company and another former director of a now-defunct Russian firm that owes £9.37m (€13.3m) to the bank.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is trying to recover the money, which the now-bankrupt Runicom oil trading firm received from SBS-Agro - a bank to which the EBRD had loaned money and which went under following the Russian economic crash of 1998.

A Moscow court confirmed in 2002 that Runicom, a company based in Switzerland, should repay the money to the EBRD, the London-based bank said in a statement last night.

It said that it had asked its lawyers to file suit in a Swiss court.

The BBC, which is planning to broadcast a story on the case on Thursday, said that the EBRD had written to billionaire Abramovich, to Yevgeny Shvidler - another former Runicom director – and to Abramovich’s Sibneft oil company in 2003 seeking payment of the debt.

Sibneft used Runicom for oil trading.

The BBC said that the EBRD suspected that documents Runicom had used to demonstrate it had repaid the loan to another company were forgeries.