LONDON—Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is not President Vladimir Putin’s “cashier” and nor did he buy Chelsea FC as a vehicle to corrupt the West, his lawyer told England’s High Court in a defamation hearing over a book about Putin’s Russia. In the 2020 book, British journalist Catherine Belton chronicles Putin’s rise to power and how many of his associates from the former Soviet spy services rose to positions of wealth and influence after he won the top Kremlin job in 1999. A lawyer for Abramovich told the court that passages in the book “Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West,” published by HarperCollins, were clearly defamatory. Abramovich is suing both HarperCollins and Belton. “The claimant is described in the book as Putin’s cashier and the custodian of Kremlin slush funds,” Hugh Tomlinson, a lawyer for Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, told the High …