Monday’s announcement came after the AIBA acted in the wake of allegations that large amounts of money were paid out in an attempt to ensure boxers from Azerbaijan received gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics. The claims, made on the BBC’s Newsnight programme in the UK in September, provoked a media storm. They included allegations of payments of millions of dollars from an Azeri national to the AIBA’s World Series of Boxing (WSB), a tournament inaugurated by the body last year. The money was allegedly in return for guaranteed gold medals for Azerbaijan in boxing competitions at the Games.
The SIC has now completed its investigation and Dr. Tom Virgets, chairman of the five-member panel, said: “We have conducted an exhaustive investigation over the past two months, and we have concluded that the allegations made by BBC Newsnight in September that there was an investment by a government or any discussion or effort to guarantee gold medals were completely without merit.”
The BBC had specifically claimed the Azerbaijan Government had made an investment of US$10 million in return for a guarantee of two Olympic boxing gold medals at London 2012. Dr Virgets said the Committee found that “the BBC relied heavily on hearsay” to support the allegations it had made in relation to the source of the investment, which the investigation has established “was in fact made by a single private investor named Mr Hamid Hamidov.”
The Committee said it was “satisfied that the investment was made by Mr Hamidov and was made for commercial purposes, namely to assist in the establishment and operation of US boxing franchises.” He added that the funds had been transferred by WSB from its Swiss base in Lausanne to Colorado Springs in the United States to finance boxing franchises in four cities there, and that the subject of medals had never come up in any discussions or agreements. “This was a purely commercial investment, unconnected to the Olympic Games, and we have traced both the source of funds and their disbursement, and documented our findings,” Dr Virgets added.
Dr Virgets said the Committee in particular found that BBC allegations made in respect of Ivan Khodabakhsh, the WSB chief operating officer, and namely that he had made a promise of medals, were “groundless and unsupported by any credible evidence”. The SIC’s final report was dispatched to the AIBA on Monday. The BBC has not responded yet to the report.
