Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has dropped London’s Chelsea Football Club and its owner, longtime client Roman Abramovich, barely hours before the U.K. government put sanctions on the Russian oligarch, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The news first surfaced about the American firm dropping Abramovich on Friday from a memo dated March 9 and first reported by London’s Financial News.