McLaren report (149 pages) reveals the details of the corruption system to the highest echelons, with bribes of millions in exchange for medals
They are 149 pages but they read (almost) like a novel: the independent McLaren report (the first volume came out on September 30) on corruption in international boxing and in particular at the Olympic and pre-Olympic tournaments in London 2012 and Rio 2016 could easily become a best seller. The genre? Grotesque yellow against the backdrop of a completely corrupt world, what remains of the noble art of boxing. «The International Olympic Federation (Aiba) – it is written in the preamble – has a long history of manipulation and corruption of matches. Formally, the federal structure operated according to the rules, it was a pity that there was a parallel organization within it that bypassed controls and facilitated manipulation and corruption. And high-level officials have extended their powers precisely to support the parallel structure».
The incidents of corruption and manipulation of the results, according to the report (Canadian jurist Richard McLaren is the author of all the most important doping investigations in recent years, including that of state doping in Russia) went on at least since the Games of Athens in 2004, totally influencing the awarding of medals. In Rio there are nine matches suspected of having been manipulated.
Bribery began with qualifying tournaments, authentic “training” to assign the victory not to the strongest of each match but to the winners designated in lists built at the table, with a chain of orders that were transmitted by the top executives (the six highest in rank in the federal organization chart, president included) to the last of the volunteers, who – petty – obeyed not for monetary compensation, unlike the top management, but with the hope of being called up to the following tournaments with paid travel and hotel.
The report points out as the federal president Ching-Kuo Wu in 2016 he appointed an internal investigative commission which, in its final document, found no anomalies in the results, reassuring the Olympic Committee that boxing was free from corruption. On the other hand, the IOC – which already recorded numerous episodes of doping – reported numerous financial problems and monstrous indebtedness, threatening to suspend the federation from the Olympic forum and even not to have the tournament played in Tokyo. The manipulation took place in two ways: by buying a medal directly or – for those with a lot of money – by deciding to host an Olympic or world qualifying tournament that gave access to a “winning package.».
The figures at stake were important: Azerbaijan would have tried to buy two Olympic golds in London in exchange for a loan (not to be repaid) to the federation of 10 million dollars but some BBC reporters they sniffed the case and President Wu ordered his men to cancel the operation. The millions spent by Turkey to organize the 2012 Olympic qualifiers (with related bribes paid with “rolls of banknotes”) were repaid with a series of “cascading orders to officials and referees” accustomed – the report writes – to “a culture of ‘absolute obedience’. Countries that were always helped were technically not able to express athletes of the highest level but with ample financial resources. The system was extensive: all 36 referees and match officials operating at the 2016 Rio Games were suspended after the tournament. Those who did not play the game were first threatened then – if they resisted – excluded from the ring.
The report also cites the testimony of a judge who did not intend to follow the guidelines who would have been threatened by a “judge of Italian nationality” who would have said: “GLook, I see that you are a great referee and you judge very well but it is obvious that you are not as good at receiving our reminders and you do not know how important it is that you follow what we are asking you to do“. Another referee recalls that “… those who threatened me had the keys to my (hotel) room and they came in and practically drunk they told me that if I didn’t start doing the job I was hired for and that things wouldn’t they would have worked very well for me … I was scared to death … ». In the second part of the report, the commission of inquiry will analyze the individual match-fixing: it risks exclusion from Paris 2024.
October 1, 2021 (change October 1, 2021 | 4:49 pm)
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