Translated material
Finished the game
Criminal cases have been opened regarding the theft of money allocated for the Vancouver Olympics
The UPC announced yesterday the initiation of two criminal cases regarding the theft of budget funds allocated for preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Immediately after the end of the Games, which became the worst for Russia in modern history, President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin said that the money allocated for preparation for the competitions was “invested in the wrong place.” After this, the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation initiated an audit into the effective use of Olympic funds, following which it issued a report describing dozens of cases of corruption. The investigation immediately became interested in him, but criminal cases appeared only now.The Winter Olympics in Vancouver was truly a failure for the Russian team - it won only three gold, five silver and seven bronze medals, taking 11th place in the number of awards. This result turned out to be the worst in the entire history of participation of the Soviet Union and Russia in the Winter Olympics. President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin did not hide their disappointment. As the head of state said after the end of the Olympics, those responsible for the failure “will have to make a courageous decision and write statements.” “If they can’t, we will help them,” the president added.
Many believed that the first to answer for the failure were the President of the Olympic Committee Leonid Tyagachev and the Minister of Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Vitaly Mutko. However, none of them saw their fault in such a disastrous performance at the Olympics. Mr. Tyagachev said then that he performed only representative functions, and his organization was only involved in processing visas, accreditations and hotel reservations. Vitaly Mutko, in turn, complained about the lack of time: they say, his ministry appeared only two years ago, and one of them went to transfer affairs.
However, it was clear that resignations could not be avoided, and soon after the president’s harsh words, Leonid Tyagachev resigned, whose place was later taken by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov. Mr. Mutko managed to stay in his chair.
A little later, the authorities started talking about the financial side of the issue - billions of budget rubles were spent on preparations for the Olympics, and at the end the country received a juicy slap in the face. “All this happened despite the fact that investments in the training of our athletes are comparable to the costs of other countries. And to be very frank, it is higher than in other countries. And the problem, it seems, is not a lack of resources, but their ineffective use,” Dmitry Medvedev said at the end of March. The Prime Minister, for his part, noted that from 2006 to 2009, about 3.5 billion rubles were allocated for preparations for the Olympics in Vancouver. only from federal sources. “Perhaps the money we allocated was not invested where it was needed, but where those who managed it wanted?” - he noted.
The Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation undertook to check where and by whom the Olympic billions were invested, which in June published a report in which, on 70 pages, many episodes of misappropriation of money by officials were described: how much their hotel rooms actually cost, what price increase schemes they used when purchasing sports equipment, etc. An audit by the Accounts Chamber showed that each of Vancouver's Olympic medals conventionally cost Russia 388 million rubles. — in total, more than 6 billion rubles were spent on preparing the team for the 2010 Games.
In particular, as stated in the report, the hotel room of the Minister of Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy cost $1,499 per day - according to government decree, it should have cost more than ten times less. In addition, the auditors claimed that the wrong people went to Vancouver as part of the national team; in particular, people who had nothing to do with the teams were accredited. At the same time, several coaches of athletes who competed at the Games were not included in the national team. Mr. Mutko, however, did not agree with these data. “I don’t know who wrote what there, but all this speculation about who and how much was spent is complete nonsense and flea fishing,” the minister said then.
The Chairman of the Accounts Chamber, Sergei Stepashin, reported separately on the results of the audit to the President of Russia at the end of July. Then he said that based on the results of the inspection, criminal cases were opened on 12 episodes related to preparation for and participation in the Games. However, Mr. Stepashin was immediately corrected by the Investigative Committee, saying that there were no cases, and for now only a pre-investigation check was being carried out. And now, two months later, the cases finally appeared, but there were not 12 of them, but so far only two - both under the article “fraud.” As investigators calculated, the damage in one of them amounted to 8 million rubles, and in the other - 223 million. The investigation does not yet have specific suspects, however, the SKP stipulated that “a number of officials of the Russian Ministry of Sports and Tourism system and heads of commercial organizations” are being checked.”
Meanwhile, Vitaly Mutko remains calm even after this. “We need to look at what kind of criminal cases they are. We are talking about 2006-2007 based on materials from the Accounts Chamber. Believe me, there will not be a single criminal case regarding the preparations for Vancouver, for which I was responsible,” he said yesterday.