IOC probes boxing’s gold medal ‘bribe’ claims

THE International Olympic Committee (IOC) are involved in discussions with the BBC over allegations that large amounts of money were paid out in an attempt to ensure boxers from Azerbaijan received gold medals at the 2012 Olympics.

The International Amateur Boxing Association have launched an investigation after the claims were made on the Newsnight programme, which found payments of millions of dollars from an Azeri national to the AIBA’s World Series of Boxing competition.The money was allegedly in return for guaranteed Azeri gold medals at the London Games, claims strongly denied by the AIBA.

An IOC statement this morning said: “We welcome AIBA’s announcement of an immediate inquiry into these claims and we await the outcome of their investigation. For its part, the IOC takes all allegations of corruption very seriously. And we would urge the BBC to make any evidence they have available to AIBA and to our ethics commission which will then determine if further action is necessary. We would also note that the judging process in boxing as in other sports at the Games are transparent and open to public scrutiny — and a number of sports including boxing have made significant changes to their procedures in recent years to deal with any potential issues.”

The BBC did not confirm whether evidence had been passed on to IOC officials but a spokesperson last night admitted: “We’re talking to the IOC at the moment about what we found out.”

The allegations, from an unnamed insider, relate to the financial affairs of the World Series of Boxing, a full-time, salaried tournament inaugurated by AIBA last year — ostensibly to make it more attractive to fighters to stay in the amateur ranks. AIBA president Dr Ching-Kuo Wu branded the claims “totally untrue and ludicrous”.