Oppessive championship

Transparency International fighters are concerned about the course of preparing for the 2018 World Cup in Russia

The International Anti -Corruption Movement Transparency International has published a report on corruption in world sports. One of the chapters of the report is devoted to preparations for the World Cup, which should be held in Russia in 2018.

The Russian leadership did not learn the negative lessons of the Sochi Olympiad and does not reveal enough information about the construction of stadiums and infrastructure for the 2018 World Cup, ”the authors of the report state. According to them, it is extremely difficult to track the real level of expenses in a particular region or city. Transparency researchers expect that the original estimate of $ 16 billion, as in the case of the Sochi Olympics, can eventually grow several times. The 2014 winter games cost Russia, according to official figures, $ 51 billion with an initial estimate of 12 billion.

Read more about corruption in Russian and world sports Radio Liberty was told by one of the authors of the report, Deputy Director of Transpensers Internet - Russia Andrei Zhvirblis:

Andrey Zhvirblis

- Transparency International makes reports on the corruption component in various fields of human activity. The fact that this time the report is dedicated to sports is inspired by large sports scandals of the past year?

- In fact, this is not connected with the last scandals if you mean the story with FIFA, because the report began to prepare before this story became public. Firstly, the understanding that the sports sphere is highly corrupt was existed for a long time. For example, information about abuses in FIFA existed for a dozen years, another thing is that in 2015 we saw that she began to result in specific criminal cases, investigations, charges, and so on. Secondly, sport is an extremely important part of human activity, this is what people pay attention to, what is, in a sense, an ethical standard for all people who watch competitions, go to get sick at stadiums, are simply interested. Let us recall how the successes of the Russian national team at the Olympics or in almost any championship are enthusiastic about almost all of our citizens. The concept of the Olympic Games - "faster, higher, stronger", this is the desire for honest achievements. And in fact, it turns out that very often this area is associated with completely unethical behavior, with dirty schemes, corruption, and theft.

In addition, sport today is associated with huge money. This is the money of the advertising budgets that are sponsoring certain events, this is budget financing in the preparation of major events - the Olympiad, the World Cup. Finally, these are sports bets. There are also strong tools of illegal assignment of money, laundering, and holding dummy games. In sports, there is a really large amount of financial resources and a large amount of corruption, which must be dealt with. Our report represents some general questions and raises them to a new level. We emphasize the globalness of the problem and its versatility. Prior to this, the global reports of Transparency were devoted to corruption in areas such as education, medicine, etc. It must be understood that sport is no less important, although this is an area of leisure. But there is a lot of money, and sport is of great moral importance for society.

They talked about abuses in FIFA for 5-10 years. The charges were brought only last year

- Is it possible to compare the level of corruption in sports and in other areas? What place in the conditional rating of the most corrupt spheres of human life is occupied by abuse in sports?

- It is quite difficult to compare, but the fact that the sport is among the leaders is one hundred percent. Another thing is that this information is almost no in the public sphere, since corruption in sports is often not investigated. They talked about abuses in FIFA for five to ten years. The accusations were charged only last year. That is, from the point of view of studying corruption, sport is a relatively new area. Abuses in medicine, education, construction, state orders are a well -known topic, both in Russia and in other countries. And our report is not limited to Russian abuses. If we are talking about financial flows, then in Russia there is a preparation for the 2018 World Cup, and these are large budgetary funds, but in the United States, in the meantime, billions of dollars annually fall into a sports industry through sponsorship, through advertising, and there are also a lot of abuse. The report has a separate large article dedicated to the scream. For Russians, this is a little ridiculous - they say, what kind of game is this? But you need to understand that about a billion people are watching the World Crycade Championship, this is a more popular sport than football. Attention to corruption in sports is absolutely certain not only thanks to the efforts of Transparency, state structures will pay more and more attention to this. I think that soon we will find out about many new corruption scandals in different countries. And I hope that we will see some kind of reform, new trends in international organizations, which are a little "booked".

- You mentioned the idealized perception of sports. It seems to me that during the Sochi Olympics, many Russians simply did not want to know about the corruption component in preparation for the games - they say, we should not spoil our holiday. In your opinion, does Russians really have a very low readiness for the perception of the negative aspects of sports life?

Ordinary citizens very much get some benefits from large competitions

- It's hard to say. I am rather inclined to believe that the Olympic holiday really does not need to spoil. But you need to understand that the Olympics lasts a couple of weeks. And during the preparation and after the conduct, it is quite possible to raise questions: where did the money go? How effective were they spent? Where were the violations? Where were the funds stolen? In addition, it must be understood that the socio-economic context between the Sochi Olympics and the 2018 World Cup has clearly changed a lot. Questions, I think, Russian society will be ready to ask much more. In addition, it must be understood that ordinary citizens in a very small extent receive some benefits from large competitions. As a result of the World Cup, maybe new sports schools for children will appear in some cities. As a result of the Olympics in our Russian cities, almost nothing changed even in the sense of sports. The infrastructure appeared only in Sochi - now we can ski there. I think that people asked a lot of questions then. And now there will be much more economic recession and questions: what's the point in this championship for us? Of course, it’s nice to realize that your country is taking such a global event, but that we and our children are a big question that Russians are quite ready to ask.

The opacity of preparation for the 2018 World Cup causes the greatest concern

- You write that Russia does not take into account the mistakes of the Sochi Olympiad, conducting preparations for the World Cup. What do you mean and what bad trends are already observed?

- As for the World Cup, we studied the availability of information about the preparation. In fact, this information really is not. She gathers grains from different documents. This is due to the features of the functioning of the Russian budget, and how the money is distributed. In general, information about what projects and where were implemented were collected by public organizations. The Corruption Foundation eventually presented us with one of the most complete analyzes on which object how much money was spent. And there is practically no such information regarding the World Cup, there is no information resource, the openness is insufficient. The opacity of preparation for the 2018 World Cup causes the greatest concern.