Billions stolen from Sochi 2014 Games: Putin critic
AFP May 31, 2013, 3:49 am
MOSCOW (AFP) - A renowned Kremlin critic on Thursday accused President Vladimir Putin's government and its allied tycoons of stealing tens of billions of dollars assigned for construction of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
Opposition leader and former top cabinet member Boris Nemtsov and his report's co-author Leonid Martynyuk -- a member of the anti-Kremlin Solidarity movement -- said about $25-30 billion of the estimated $50 billion assigned to the Games has gone missing.
"The Winter Olympic Games in Sochi have turned into a monstrous scam," Nemtsov and Martynyuk wrote in the report.
Putin has already expressed frustration at the rising costs of the Games, that are now on track to become the most expensive in Olympic history.
The money is supposed to be spent on the construction of new Sochi sports facilities as well as the repair of everything from roads and hotels to the laying of new railways and the creation of a bullet train system.
Almost all of the projects have been assigned to giant firms that are either directly owned by the government or run by billionaires who are on close terms with the Kremlin.
The two authors wrote that their conclusions came from a six-month study of data and analysis of various cost overruns.
They said they also compared these overruns with those seen in previous Olympic Games to estimate how much was in fact embezzled by senior managers at the various firms.
"The Olympic Games are Putin's personal project," the report says.
"And it is clear who stole this money -- those who are close to that same Putin."
Nemtsov served as a first deputy prime minister in charge of social affairs in one of the governments of the late president Boris Yeltsin.
He joined the opposition when Putin came to power in 2000 and has spent several days in jail for attending unsanctioned rallies in Moscow.
Nemtsov has recently developed a reputation for writing critical reports about corruption and other misspending under Putin.
He has accused the Russian leader himself of owning lavish property abroad and amassing a fortune worth billions of dollars.
The Kremlin has accused Nemtsov's previous reports of being based on hearsay and speculation.
Nemtsov admitted that he was hard-pressed to find actual government data for his latest study because information about contracts remained largely secret.
"An absence of fair competition, clan politics and the strictest censorship about anything related to the Olympic Games have led to a sharp increase in costs and a low quality of work," the report said.
He further accused the government of purposely turning a blind eye on the corruption that both he and other opposition figures in Moscow and Sochi have been writing about in their Internet blogs for months.
"The stolen money could have been used to build 3,000 kilometres (1,850 miles) of high-speed railways, provide housing for 800,000 people or build thousands of ice hockey arenas and football fields in all the cities of Russia," the report says.
Nemtsov added that he would be pushing prosecutors and investigators to look into the allegations. No such probe has been launched to date.
Neither the Kremlin nor the government responded to the charges.
Nemtsov published them to coincide with a visit to Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge.
