Mutu ordered to pay €17m to Chelsea as compensation for his transfer to Juventus

Adrian Mutu will have to pay €17m to Chelsea as compensation for his transfer to Juventus, after the European Court of Human Rights rejected his appeal.

In October 2004 the Romanian tested positive for cocaine, incurring a seven-month ban.

He was also released by the Blues for breach of contract, and after he signed for Juventus they appealed to FIFA for compensation.

In 2008 the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber ordered Mutu to pay €17,173,990 in compensation, made up largely of the unamortised transfer fee they paid to get him from Parma.

In 2013 the same body ordered that Juventus and Livorno pay compensation, as Mutu had initially signed for the latter as the Bianconeri had no non-EU slots left.

However, that was overruled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2015, and the player was once again found to be liable.

As a last resort, Mutu appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, submitting that the CAS could not be regarded as an independent and impartial tribunal.

One of the members of the panel during his appeal had been a partner in a law firm that represented the interests of Chelsea's owner, Roman Abramovich.

The ECHR found that the former striker “had not been forced to accept the CAS’s jurisdiction” but also had not “waived in a non-equivocal manner the right to have his case heard by an independent and impartial tribunal, in that he had requested the withdrawal of the arbitrator chosen by Chelsea”.

The issue was therefore to establish whether the Court of Arbitration for Sport failed in its role as an impartial body.

The court found that any appeal could be lodged against CAS with the Swiss Supreme Court, and that the Federal Supreme Court considered decisions made there as “genuine judgments, similar to those of a State court”.

In summary “the Federal Supreme Court had concluded that Mr Mutu had not substantiated his allegations” against CAS, and “there had therefore been no violation of the applicants’ Article 6 § 1 rights”.

Concluding, the court ruled “Mr Mutu’s complaints under Articles 4 § 1 and 8 showed no appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols and had therefore to be declared inadmissible”.

With his final route of appeal now exhausted, it appears Mutu must pay €17m to Chelsea, a sum he insists he cannot possibly afford.