One Olympic medal in Vancouver cost Russia 388 mln rbls - auditors.

MOSCOW, July 3 (By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila
Alexandrova) -- In cash terms the Vancouver Olympics proved a far worse
failure for Russia than it was from the standpoint of unachieved sports
achievements. Billions of rubles were wasted, corrupt functionaries made
fortunes, and each Olympic medal cost Russia a disgraceful 388 million
rubles, Russia's Audit Chamber said after a probe.
On its website the Audit Chamber published a report of what it called
an inquiry into the effectiveness of the use of funds disbursed for the
preparations for and holding the 21 winter Olympics and 10th Paralympic
Games in Vancouver. The 70-page report lists dozens of instances of
outrageous corruption by sports bosses.
Audit Chamber chief Sergei Stepashin reported the findings on Monday,
when the presidium of the presidential council for physical culture and
sports met in session.
"There are direct financial violations. This will be a subject matter
for scrutiny by the law enforcement agencies in the future," Deputy Prime
Minister Alexander Zhukov, just recently elected president of the Russian
Olympic Committee, told the media.
In Vancouver, Russia placed 11th in the unofficial team standing - the
worst result in the whole history of Soviet and Russian athletes'
participation in Winter Olympics.
As soon as the Olympics were over, ROC President Leonid Tyagachyov
tendered his resignation and Alexander Zhukov was elected his successor.
If the Audit Chamber is to be believed, Russia's preparations for the
Vancouver Olympics devoured 6.2 billion rubles of budget and
extra-budgetary funds. While one medal at the Paralympic Games cost Russia
ten million rubles, each Olympic medal's price tag carried a nine-digit
figure - 388,000,000 rubles.
According to the Audit Chamber's report, the hotel suite of Tourism
and Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko cost 1,500 dollars a night, and tickets
were sold to Russian fans at eleven nominal prices, says the daily
Moskovsky Komsomolets.
As the Audit Chamber has found out, functionaries spent on hotel
accommodation tens of times more than they were allowed by the law. Sports
functionaries defrauded budget using a variety of schemes, and people
having nothing to do with the Olympic team went to Vancouver as its
official members.
Tourism and Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko stayed at Fairmont Hotel
Vancouver. The Russian delegation paid for that 34,000 Canadian dollars.
Two of Mutko's deputies were in the same hotel, too. Their bills were paid
from the overall sum transferred for the accommodation of the official
Olympic delegation. Nobody has even recalled the government's resolution
to the effect the hotel accommodation of employees delegated by
budget-financed organizations shall not exceed 130 US dollars a day.
Mutko's wife, Tatyana, used the official delegation's charter flight
to Vancouver, but she paid the 52,000 rubles for the ticket only in May -
after the Audit Chamber launched its probe.
Part of the report exposes how Olympic tickets were sold from the
Russian quota. The Russian organizing committee and the Olympic committee
of Russia concluded a contract on distributing the tickets in the
territory of Russia with a closed joint stock company calling itself
Olympic Panorama. That intermediary purchased the tickets at their nominal
price. Then it resold 40 percent of the tickets to foreign companies. The
remainder was offered to Russian fans at a price eleven times above the
maximum level established under the agreement.
The Audit Chamber's report contains detailed information about the
theft of money that had been allocated for athletes' training, for
purchasing sports gear and for holding competitions, and also other
information explaining the Russian team's disgrace in Vancouver.
The athletes' training in compliance with a unified calendar is
ineffective and breeds corruption, says the Audit Chamber. Some firms
having a staff of just several employees received up to 3.5 billion rubles
a year for financing athletes' training process.
As the probe has found out, a center for the training of Russian
national teams subordinate to the Sports Ministry purchased sports gear
from a provider company without a prior bidding contest and the surplus at
the moment of resale to the state reached 66 percent.
The auditors said that many of those who were sent to Vancouver with
the Russian sports team had nothing to do with it whatsoever. More facts
from the Audit Chamber's report. The national figure skating team included
Yana Rudkovskaya, wife of figure skater Yevgeny Plushchenko, and daughter
of Figure Skating Federation President Valentin Piseyev went to Vancouver
as an interpreter of the snowboarding team.
At the same time a number of athletes' coaches remained overboard.
As it probed into the spending of Olympic money, the Audit Chamber
arrived at another remarkable conclusion concerning the team's coaches.
Many of them lacked the required qualification and education. The general
conclusion is this. "In Russia up to this day there has been no unified
agency (or organization) responsible for the special training and
participation of Russian national teams in Olympic Games, having all the
necessary material resources for this and prepared to bear responsibility."
The results of the inquiry will be reported to President Dmitry
Medvedev. The Audit Chamber also dispatched messages to the
Prosecutor-General's Office Investigation Committee, the Interior
Ministry, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Federal Tax Service, the insurance
watchdog Rosstrakhnadzor, the federal agency for the management of state
property, the national union of physical culture and sports associations
Olympic Committee of Russia and Moscow's Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The daily
Moskovsky Komsomolets quotes a presidential staff official as saying that
the Kremlin is waiting for the government to react.
The online periodical NEWSru.com recalls that after the Winter
Olympics President Medvedev cracked down on functionaries for the failure
of Russian athletes. He did not rule out that the findings of probes might
be handed over to the prosecutor's office.
"All that happened despite the fact that investments into the training
of our athletes were similar to the costs of other countries. And if one
is to be very frank, they were ABOVE those in other countries. The way we
see it, the problem is not about a shortage of resources, but about their
ineffective use," Medvedev said.
For his part the Minister of Sports, Tourism and Youth Policies,
Vitaly Mutko, said about the results of the Audit Chamber's probe that he
saw no great problems with sports in the country.
"In the operation of any vast industry one will always be able to find
violations," Mutko said.

-0-str


Delete & Prev | Delete & Next