One sits in prison, another just got out on bail, a third awaits extradition hearings. But while many Russian tycoons face legal pressure from their government, Roman Abramovich passes time in the director's boxes at British stadiums, leaping to his feet in triumph, burying his face in disappointment, relishing each kick by the London soccer team he has just bought.

Abramovich, Russia's second-richest man and the quietest of the men known as oligarchs who once seemed to run the country, appears to be extricating himself from the tangled and untamed business-political world in his home country, where many of his peers find themselves the target of criminal investigations.

With Russian parliamentary elections scheduled for December and a presidential election next March, Abramovich hopes to avoid the fate of other business leaders who play the role of villain in many campaigns.

"The idea is to fade away from Russia and the political turmoil associated with the election," said an associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity. By "selling the assets, he becomes not vulnerable to anyone" and finally "independent of the moods and whims behind Kremlin walls."

There was a time when Abramovich benefited from those whims. As a hungry young entrepreneur assembling a fortune in the oil and aluminum industries, he befriended the daughter of then-president Boris Yeltsin and, like other oligarchs, snapped up state assets at bargain prices. He was part of the "family" around Yeltsin, once even called its personal "cashier." Now 36, he is worth $5.7 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him one of the world's 50 richest people.

President Vladimir Putin's government seems to be renewing a campaign against the oligarchs as the elections draw nearer. Prosecutors this summer opened eight investigations into the Yukos oil company and associates of its chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the only Russian with more money than Abramovich.

Khodorkovsky's adviser and fellow billionaire, Platon Lebedev, was arrested on fraud charges and was ordered held until Oct. 30. Khodorkovsky was called in for questioning. Abramovich's estranged partner, Boris Berezovsky, who had fled Russia, faces an extradition hearing in Britain in October. And another self-exiled tycoon, Vladimir Gusinsky, was detained in Greece and released on bond pending a Russian extradition request.

[A fund led by Khodorkovsky said yesterday that it had bought an influential weekly and hired a prominent critic of Putin to run it, news services reported. Open Russia, Khodorkovsky's charity fund, announced it had acquired the right to publish the weekly Moscow News and that Yevgeny Kiselyov, a top television investigative journalist, had been named editor in chief.]

For a time, rumors swirled that Abramovich was next, but nothing has come of it. Abramovich eschews public talk of political maneuvering and instead focuses with childlike delight on the joys of buying virtually any soccer player he likes and soaking up the novelty of part-time life in the West.

"I like the lifestyle in England," he told British reporters last month. "It's multinational and multicultural. . . . Everyone can feel comfortable there." He shrugged off questions about his plans. Asked about the disposal of Russian assets, he said simply, "We are selling some things and buying other things."

But he is doing more selling than buying these days. Last spring he sealed a giant merger deal in which his Sibneft oil company will be swallowed up by Yukos. He later sold his 26 percent share of the airline Aeroflot and, according to the associate, has proposed selling his 50 percent share of Russian Aluminum to a partner, Oleg Deripaska. He is also looking to sell his 37.5 percent share of Ruspromavto, a holding company that owns 22 automobile industry firms, as well as a meat-processing factory in Omsk.

"Why is he doing all this?" asked Igor Bunin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, voicing the question that has perplexed Moscow all summer. "I have the impression that he would like to go away for a while. . . . He made big money. He's stopped investing his money for a while to save it for a possible jump to the West."

Feeding this theory, Abramovich recently said he would not seek a second term as governor of Chukotka, a barren Arctic region across the Bering Strait from Alaska and home to more reindeer than people.

Abramovich won the governorship in 2000 promising to transform the destitute wasteland where winter lasts nine months. Since then, he has put $200 million of his own money into reviving Chukotka. Today, its capital, Anadyr, has three hotels, a movie theater, supermarket, renovated airport, Internet cafe and houses painted bright shades of blue, green, yellow and red.

Lately he has not spent as much time in Chukotka, and constituents worry what will happen when his term expires in two years. "It's not going to be better up here without him, that's for sure," Alexander Adelshtein, a spokesman for the district government, said by telephone. "It's natural to keep hoping to the end that he will change his mind."

His recent transactions are yielding a massive cash windfall, much of it kept abroad. Last year Sibneft, which Abramovich and Berezovsky acquired from the state for $250 million in 1995, paid $1 billion in dividends to Abramovich and his remaining partners. Sibneft recently promised another $1 billion dividend this year. The sale to Yukos will bring in $3 billion more and his Russian Aluminum holdings are on the block for yet another $3 billion.

"He's the only one in Russia right now who has sold more than he has bought," said Yakov Pappe, an economist and author of a study of Russian oligarchs.

Abramovich's spokesman, John Mann, said no one should read too much into that. Mann pointed out that Abramovich bought the Russian branch of ICN Pharmaceuticals for $100 million this summer and noted that Abramovich and his partners will retain 26 percent of the merged Yukos-Sibneft company. "You don't buy more if you're going to leave," Mann said.

Still, the acquisition garnering the most attention was the one abroad. Abramovich bought the storied Chelsea soccer club in July, paying the equivalent of $94 million and assuming debt of $141 million. Since then he has gone on a spending spree, shelling out $150 million to secure some of the most talented players in the country in pursuit of the team's first league championship since 1955.

Britain reacted to the purchase with a mixture of awe and dread. A member of Parliament questioned whether Abramovich was a "fit and proper person" to own a soccer club, given his emergence from Russia's gangster capitalism. But Abramovich's largess soon overwhelmed those doubts. Fleet Street newspapers began gushing about the "Roman Revolution" he was bringing to the team they nicknamed "Chelski."

This is hardly the first rich man's toy he has acquired. He already owns a Boeing Business Jet, the equivalent of a 737 airliner, and recently bought a 355-foot yacht. He has a 100-acre estate outside Moscow, a luxury apartment in St. Tropez and the estate in West Sussex south of London, with stables for 100 horses, two polo pitches, a swimming pool, tennis court, rifle ranges and go-kart track. He's selling a $7.9 million London apartment so he can get a bigger place. Living large, it seems, comes easier outside Russia. With British journalists, Abramovich has sounded tired of the constant uncertainty back home. "The problem is that we don't live in a free country," he said. "We're not used to people being allowed to spend their own money how they want to."

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