Property Rights, Sanctions and the Abramovich Test for Britain

Property rights are sacrosanct in English law. Not as sentiment, but as architecture. The whole point of London as a financial and legal centre was never that Britain was morally perfect. It was that Britain was predictable. Title could be transferred, contracts enforced, assets protected, and disputes resolved by courts rather than by ministerial mood music. That tradition is the basis of Britain’s reputation for trust.

That is why the Roman Abramovich case matters far beyond Chelsea, far beyond Ukraine, and far beyond one sanctioned billionaire. It tests whether Britain still means what it has always sold to the world: that property is protected unless and until the law, applied by a court, says otherwise.

Abramovich sold Chelsea Football Club in 2022. The sale proceeds, about £2.5 billion, remain frozen in a UK bank account. The Prime Minister now says a licence is being issued to transfer the money, and threatens court action if Abramovich does not comply. The rhetoric is simple: pay up, or we will make you. The law is not simple. The law is the entire story.

The central question is not whether Ukraine deserves support. It does. The question is whether the British state can lawfully transform a sanctions freeze into a compelled transfer of private property on terms dictated by ministers, without a clear, enforceable legal instrument and without Parliament creating an explicit confiscation power.

If Britain abandons the distinction between freezing and taking, it is not punishing Abramovich. It is advertising to the world that property in Britain is conditional on political alignment.

Start from first principles. In English law, property rights are not absolute, but they are protected. The state can interfere only through lawful powers, for a lawful purpose, proportionately, and with due process. Where the executive claims a power to deprive a person of property, the courts require clarity. They do not accept implied confiscation by administrative shortcut.

Sanctions law is not a general confiscation regime. It is a targeted restrictions regime. The key mechanism is the asset freeze: you may own your property, but you cannot use it, move it, or benefit from it, and no one in the UK may assist you. That is coercive. It is deliberately coercive. But coercion is not confiscation.

This distinction matters because it is the thin line between rule of law and political seizure.

Under the UK’s sanctions framework, Abramovich’s designation means that UK persons cannot deal with funds owned, held, or controlled by him, and cannot make funds available to him or for his benefit. In practice, that is why the £2.5 billion is stuck. Banks cannot process the transaction without licensing. Counterparties cannot touch it. The state does not have to take the money to immobilise it.

That is already a grave interference. Courts treat sanctions as severe measures, and they are reviewable. But the state’s legal case is materially easier to defend when it says: we are freezing, not taking. The moment the state tries to force a transfer to a politically selected end use, the state steps onto confiscation terrain, and the legal burden rises.

Now the uncomfortable part for the government: the language of “he owes” is not law. It is messaging. “Owes” implies a debt, a due obligation, something enforceable. Yet the public record still does not show a signed deed, trust instrument, contractual undertaking, or binding declaration that irrevocably commits the proceeds to a Ukraine only foundation on terms defined by the UK.

Government supporters will respond: he said he would do it. He announced it publicly. He pledged a foundation. But English law does not enforce moral pledges simply because they were politically convenient at the time. The enforceability question is brutally technical: was there a binding instrument, and if so, what does it say?

If Abramovich signed a deed of covenant or created a trust, the position changes. A trust can impose irrevocable obligations. A deed can bind without consideration. A contract can bind if supported by consideration and certain terms. But absent those, a promise to make a gift is generally revocable until completed. Intention is not transfer. Announcement is not alienation. A press statement is not a deed.

This is where the rhetoric becomes dangerous. If government says “the clock is ticking” and “we will go to court”, it is tacitly admitting it does not have a simple administrative lever. Court is where you go when you need compulsion, not when you already have it.

Abramovich’s position, stripped of politics, is straightforward. The proceeds remain his property. They are frozen by sanctions. A freeze does not transfer ownership. The state cannot lawfully compel a donation unless there is an enforceable instrument or an explicit statutory power. Public statements are not deeds. Political expectations are not legal duties.

That position is not morally flattering. It is legally orthodox.

This is why the case matters. If Britain collapses the line between freezing and confiscation without Parliament acting and courts adjudicating, it is not simply resolving a dispute with one sanctioned oligarch. It is rewriting the rules under which capital has trusted London for decades.

Property rights are not sacrosanct because billionaires deserve protection. They are sacrosanct because without them, everyone’s assets become political. Britain built trust by being boring. If it chooses spectacle instead, it should not be surprised when the world takes its money elsewhere.