Chelsea have been hit with a £10.75m fine and a suspended one-year transfer ban after a Premier League investigation uncovered a series of secret payments made under former owner Roman Abramovich.

The sanctions follow a detailed probe into off‑the‑books payments to agents and associated parties between 2011 and 2018. These transactions, routed through offshore companies and not declared in official club accounts, were linked to several major transfers, including deals involving Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto’o and Andreas Christensen.

The irregularities emerged during the due diligence process carried out by the club’s new American ownership group as they prepared their takeover. On discovering the payments, the new hierarchy voluntarily reported them to the Premier League, the Football Association and UEFA.

That decision to self‑report proved crucial. The Premier League cited Chelsea’s “proactive self-reporting” and “exceptional co-operation” as significant mitigating factors, opting to suspend the first-team transfer ban for two years. The club will be allowed to sign players in upcoming windows, but any further serious breach could activate the ban in full.

Alongside the first-team sanctions, Chelsea have been hit with a nine-month academy transfer ban, effective immediately. This relates to irregularities in the registration of youth players between 2019 and 2022, a period that straddles the end of the Abramovich era and the arrival of the new owners.

Chelsea said they “accept the terms of the settlement in full” and welcomed the Premier League’s recognition of their role in uncovering and addressing the wrongdoing. The club has stressed that the breaches were committed under the previous regime and that new governance and compliance structures are now in place.

The case underlines the growing scrutiny on financial transparency in elite football. Clubs are required to submit accurate annual accounts to domestic leagues and the FA, as well as to UEFA if they compete in European competitions. Undeclared payments can distort assessments of profitability, sustainability and compliance with financial regulations.

UEFA has already punished Chelsea once in relation to historic reporting failures, issuing a €10m fine in 2023 for incomplete financial information covering 2018 and 2019. While UEFA is constrained by a five-year statute of limitations, the Premier League faces no such time bar, allowing it to examine a longer period of Abramovich-era activity.