Their fortunes could not have been more different.

As Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of oil company Yukos, is to start his eight-year prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion, his former business partner and owner of Chelsea Football Club, Roman Abramovich is poised to receive $13bn for 72 per cent in Sibneft oil company, which he sold to Gazprom, the gas monopoly.