Scheme to fix Olympic boxing medals alleged

Azerbaijan wanted its boxers to win gold medals at next year's Summer Olympics in London, so it secretly paid millions of dollars to international boxing organization World Series Boxing (WSB) to ensure that, according to a recent investigation.

That is what insiders told the BBC Newsnight program. They claim AIBA, boxing's international governing body, said an Azeri national paid $9 million to one of their competitions. The WSB is a franchised league endorsed by AIBA, the Associated Press reported.

The whistleblowers said that AIBA's chief operating officer, Ivan Khodabakhsh, told them of the transaction of funds from Azerbaijan in exchange for the Olympic boxing tournament being fixed to give gold medals to Azerbaijan's boxers. Reportedly, the WSB had financial problems in the U.S. and needed the money.

"Ivan boasted to a few of us that there was no need to worry about World Series Boxing having the coin to pay its bills," one of the sources told the BBC. "As long as the Azeris got their medals, WSB would have the cash."

Khodabakhsh refuted the allegation to the BBC and called it an absolute lie. "I deny that I have offered anyone two gold medals or have any understanding that anybody else has offered two gold medals to Azerbaijan," he said.

BBC Newsnight said that it obtained documents that showed correspondences between Khodabksh, AIBA executive director Ho Kim, and an Azeri official over an agreement on a $10 million investment. AIBA had earlier said the funding for WSB America was from a Swiss company.

Attorneys for AIBA called the allegation "preposterous and utterly untrue." The governing body's president, Dr Ching-Kuo Wu, said: "WSB is conducted in a totally transparent way."

He also said that the organization has zero tolerance for corruption and said it would launch an investigation into those charges.