Chelsea fined £10m and handed suspended transfer ban over agent payments
Chelsea have been fined £10m by the Football Association over historical secret payments to agents, but a suspended transfer ban and points deduction were not enforced after an appeal.
The Football Association has fined Chelsea £10m after the club admitted to historical breaches of rules involving payments to agents. The club was also given a suspended ban from registering new players for two transfer windows, but that penalty will only apply if further breaches occur within a set period. A separate suspended six-point deduction, which had been in place until 30 June 2027, was set aside following an appeal.
The breaches cover the period from 2009 to 2022 and relate to payments made to unregistered agents and third parties. Chelsea admitted making £47m in secret payments linked to transfers between 2011 and 2018. The club self-reported 74 breaches of FA regulations after being taken over by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital in 2022.
The original fine was £26m. It was reduced by a third to £17.25m because the club self-reported and co-operated, then by another third to £11.4m after an early guilty plea. The final penalty was set at £10m because Chelsea had already received sanctions from Uefa and the Premier League. The FA said the punishment was appropriate to deter similar misconduct and protect the integrity of the game. The £10m will be invested into grassroots football.
This is not the first recent punishment for Chelsea. In March, the club received an immediate nine-month academy transfer ban and a £750,000 fine over the registration of academy players between 2019 and 2022.
All of the breaches relate to the period when Roman Abramovich owned the club. Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government in March 2022 over alleged links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he has denied. He was granted a special licence to sell Chelsea after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, on condition that he would not benefit from the sale.
