Amateur boxing is facing expulsion from the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 by the International Olympic Committee over grave concerns relating to the sport’s finances and governance, Thomas Bach, the IOC president, warned on Sunday.
Following a two-day executive board meeting in Pyeongchang, ahead of this week’s Winter Games, Bach said the IOC had not been satisfied with a report prepared by AIBA, the world governing body for amateur boxing, and that it would be opening an investigation into the organisation. Bach added the IOC was “extremely worried” about how the sport was run and that the IOC was prepared to make bold decisions.
The issues centre around the international governing body for Olympic boxing having made Gafur Rakhimov, a man shrouded in controversy, the organisation’s new interim president. Bach also admitted that the IOC had concerns over the judging at the 2016 Rio Games.
Dr Wu Ching-kuo, the previous president, stepped down last year after a protracted dispute over allegations of financial mismanagement at AIBA, after a $10 million (£7 million) loan from Azerbaijan-based company Benkons left AIBA facing the threat of bankruptcy. Although Rakhimov, a long-serving vice president at AIBA, has been integral to reaching a settlement with Benkons, he has also been sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department for alleged links to a significant “transnational criminal organisation,” the Thieves-in-Law, an Eurasian crime syndicate.
Tokyo 2020: IOC threatens to drop boxing
