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U.K. officials have issued an unprecedented license to allow Chelsea FC to continue operating after the government blacklisted the west London club’s owner, Roman Abramovich, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss announced asset freezes and travel bans Thursday against Abramovich and six other Russian entrepreneurs allegedly close to the Kremlin, including metal tycoons Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, who fell under U.S. sanctions in 2018, and Igor Sechin, the chief executive of state-owned oil conglomerate Rosneft.

“To see an asset of this size and global profile brought into government custody is completely unprecedented,” Anita Clifford, an attorney with Red Lion Chambers in London, told ACAMS moneylaundering.com. “Mr. Abramovich’s attempts to stave off sanctions by trying to relinquish control of Chelsea have obviously failed.”

Abramovich had put Chelsea on the market for £3 billion this month amid renewed calls by U.K. opposition lawmakers and anti-graft campaigners to blacklist him in response to Russia’s increasingly brutal military offensive against Ukraine. His designation also puts the sale on hold.

To allow Chelsea to continue operating, the U.K. Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, OFSI, simultaneously issued a general license covering salaries and pensions, “reasonable costs” to host home matches and travel to away matches, and payments related to player loans and transfers agreed prior to Thursday.

But the license does not cover sponsorship payments, ticket purchases, transactions involving new player contracts and transfers, or sales of club merchandise.

Financial institutions with links to Chelsea will probably have to pause all transactions involving the club to carefully assess whether the general license applies to them, said Clifford.

“Firms will have to seek specific licenses because the general one only permits certain activity that allows the game to go on,” she said. “All other multi-million pound transactions wouldn’t be captured.”

The U.K. Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said Thursday that it would consider issuing a specific license to allow the sale to go ahead, provided none of the proceeds benefit Abramovich, who purchased Chelsea in 2003 for a reported £140 million.

U.K. officials listed several grounds for designating Abramovich, including his apparently close ties to President Vladimir Putin and other blacklisted officials and oligarchs, the tax breaks he enjoyed as a result of those connections, and the “favorable rates” he received when buying corporate shares and bidding for government contracts.

Britain also accused him of involvement in undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty through his minority stake in Evraz, a steel and mining company accused of supporting Russia’s defense industry.

“Tactically, this might make it harder for Abramovich to challenge his designation if they’ve gone for not just one basis but have identified multiple different reasons for blacklisting him,” said Clifford.

Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority temporarily suspended Evraz from trading stocks “pending clarification of the impact” of Thursday’s round of designations, which brought the total number of Russian oligarchs blacklisted by the U.K. to 18 since the government’s move to  broaden sanctions against the country last month.

Legislation approved by the House of Commons on Monday aims to ease the government’s ability to impose asset freezes and visa bans on even more oligarchs amid criticism that Britain has lagged behind the EU and U.S. in going after Russia’s finances to help Ukraine. The House of Lords is expected to vote in favor of the bill this month.

The government has also established an “oligarch taskforce” made up of officials from the Home Office, HM Treasury, the National Crime Agency, or NCA, and other executive agencies to “build cases against the list of oligarchs it has identified as targets.”

The NCA, which hosts the U.K. financial intelligence unit, or UKFIU, instructed financial institutions Thursday to include a new code, XXSNEXX, on any suspicious activity reports, or SARs, they file on payments they believe involve blacklisted Russians.

“Use the code … where you suspect the activity is consistent with money laundering and is linked to entities sanctioned by the U.K., U.S., EU and other overseas jurisdictions as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” the NCA said Thursday.

UKFIU warned that contrary to the government’s intent, some financial institutions had incorrectly filed “defense against money laundering” SARs to complete transactions they fear may violate the newly imposed sanctions, not because they showed signs of illicit finance.

Institutions must freeze funds tied to blacklisted parties and report suspected breaches to OFSI, not UKFIU.

Contact Koos Couvée at kcouvee@acams.org