Alex Haines instructed in sale of Chelsea Football Club sanction case

Outer Temple’s Alex Haines was instructed to provide expert advice on the sale of Chelsea FC and the implications of Russian sanctions imposed on club.

Alex Haines – member of the Attorney General’s Civil Panel and Outer Temple’s specialist sanctions team – was instructed by the legal team at Her Majesty’s Treasury to advise on the sale of Chelsea Football Club and the proceeds thereof in light of the designation of its former owner, Roman Abramovich, under Russia sanctions. 

On 10 March 2022, Mr Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK Government and, as a result, the Club operated within the confines and constraints caused by the imposition of sanctions.  The sanctions imposed on Mr Abramovich presented unique and unforeseen challenges to the sale process of a Premiership Football Club.  The sale was finalised on 30th May 2022.

Find out more

Alex Haines, dual national and fluent in French and Spanish, is a specialist in international law, with particular expertise in the extensive field of international organisations law. Alex was appointed to the Attorney General’s London B Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown in 2019 and as Sanctions Officer at the Caribbean Development Bank in 2020.

His practice areas include: (i) business crime and corruption including global investigations; (ii) sanctions and export control; (iii) international regulatory and disciplinary proceedings; (iv) institutional law of international organisations including their immunities and international administrative law; (v) international arbitration; and (vi) financial services inquiries (instructed on the Dame Linda Dobbs Review).

He regularly litigates before international tribunals including in Washington DC, New York City, London and Luxembourg. The cases he has been instructed in have involved more than 30 international organisations including the UN (and its specialised agencies, programmes and funds such as UNICEF), the World Bank Group, the IMF, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the African Development Bank and the Organisation of American States.

Alex has lectured on the sanctions proceedings of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to a number of institutions including the Brazilian Bar Association, the British Chamber of Commerce, the Korean Bar Association, the Shanghai Bar Association, English Law Week in Mexico, and he was a panellist at the 35th International Symposium on Economic Crime at Jesus College, Cambridge. His work on sanctions has continued through his efforts with Transparency International’s Suspension and Debarment Taskforce and Oxford International Organisations (OUP database) as a rapporteur.

Alex has also lectured on international administrative law and the immunities of international organisations at the universities of Exeter, City of London, Brasilia, Hong Kong, La Sorbonne, and King’s College, and on the application of international human rights law to international organisations at the International Court of Justice and Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice, as well as on the appeals systems of international organisations at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Alex was admitted to the New York Bar in 2019 and the Bar of Ireland in 2020. He sits on the Bar Council International Committee and is registered for direct access and qualified for litigation. Before starting at the Bar, Alex worked as an intern at the International Criminal Court in the Office of the Prosecutor in The Hague.

To find out more, contact Sam Carter on +44 (0)203 989 6669 or Colin Bunyan on +44 (0)20 7427 4886 for a confidential discussion.

News 29 Jun, 2022