Abramovich’s Chelsea owner has been granted Portuguese citizenship by Reuters

Author: Andrei Khalip

LISBON (Reuters) – Millionaire Chelsea Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club, has become a Portuguese citizen and has added a European Union passport to Russians and Israelis.

A spokesman for Abramovich confirmed a report in the Portuguese newspaper Publico on Saturday that the Russian-born businessman had been granted Portuguese citizenship on April 30, citing documents from the Ministry of Justice.

Abramovich’s case was based on a Portuguese law that offered naturalization to the descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, according to the newspaper.

Since the law was passed in 2015, thousands of Israeli Jews have been granted Portuguese citizenship. Such requests have risen in Portugal since Spain ended a similar citizenship offer for Sephardic Jews in 2019.

The genealogy of the applicants is examined by experts who are also looking for evidence of interest in Sephardic culture.

Abramovich has donated money to projects to pay homage to Portuguese Sephardic heritage in Hamburg, Germany, according to the Mazal information portal of the Jewish community in Porto.

Little is known about the history of Sephardic Jews in Russia, although Abramovich is a common Jewish surname of Ashkenazi origin.

Abramovich made his fortune, now worth $ 14.3 billion, according to Forbes, in the Russian oil industry in the 1990s and bought Chelsea Football Club in 2003. From 2000 to 2008 he was governor of the region in Russia and in 2018 he became a citizen of Israel.

About 300,000 Jews lived in Spain in 1492, when King Elizabeth and Ferdinand ordered them and the Muslims of the country to convert to Catholicism. Tens of thousands of people fled to Portugal, where they were persecuted or deported in 1496.