Roman Abramovich wins damages for "gambling problem" lies!

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica made a great bbig mistake when they published a story alleging that the Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich had a serious gambling problem, so much so in fact it was causing a rift between himself and his new wife.

This so enraged Abramovich that he decided to take La Republicca to court and won an apology and “substantial damages” for printing the lies.

The article stated that he was so addicted that when he couldn’t play at a casino, he was also playing online poker, and losing so much money that at one point he lost one of his yachts! This allegation is totally ridiculous because the Russian Billionaire earns more in interest a day than he could possibly lose at poker, whether face-to-face or online lol!

His solicitor, John Kelly, told the court that his client was embarrassed by the newspaper’s claims.

He said the newspaper had reported that Abramovich had “suffered a heavy loss in a poker game and had been forced to hand over a luxury yacht worth half a million euros to cover his gambling debt.”

“The report also alleged that Mr Abramovich’s poker playing had led to a crisis with his long-term partner Dasha Zhukova and that Mr Abramovich was now gambling online.

“The article would have been understood to mean that he had such a serious gambling problem that he was not only jeopardising his relationship with his long-term partner Dasha Zhukova, who had been forced to issue him an ultimatum that he either give up playing poker or she would end their relationship, but he was also seriously risking his financial stability and had already been forced to liquidate assets, through the sale of one of his yachts, in order to cover his heavy gambling debts.

“Regrettably, these allegations were not put to Mr Abramovich or his representatives before publication. If they had been, the defendant would have been advised of the utter falsity of the allegations.”

I personally don’t think that it would have annoyed Abramovich that he was accused of gambling (hell, we all like to do a bit of online sports gambling!), but to be accused of not being able to pay probably annoyed the hell out of him!