BBC stands by its bribe claims - Olympics
BBC’s Newsnight has recently announced that it still stands by the claims it had made earlier regarding bribes involved in boxing at the London 2012 Olympic Games. This stance of the BBC’s Newsnight has come forward after the International Boxing Association
released its report that stated the finding of zero substantial evidence regarding the claims Newsnight had made previously.
Newsnight had aired a report on September 23rd of this year that stated that the government of Azerbaijan had made a bribe worth $ 10 million in return for two gold medals in boxing at the London 2012 Olympic Games. In response to the claims made
by the BBC, the SIC launched an investigation to reach the heart of the matter. The report released by the SIC revealed no evidence that linked the government of Azerbaijan with the giving of the bribe to secure the gold medals at the Olympics.
After the report had been released, the following statements were made public by the BBC regarding the matter: "We stand by our investigation. While we anticipate the International Boxing Association [AIBA] making all the evidence they reviewed public, we
are continuing to cooperate with the ongoing investigation by the International Olympic Committee Ethics Commission."
According to the BBC, there were anonymous whistleblowers who had leaked the news of the gold medal deal in the upcoming Olympic Games. The Azeri national named in the whole issue is the chief operating officer of the World Series Boxing by the name of Ivan
Khodabaksh.
The investigation has revealed that a sum of money equivalent to $ 9 million was made by an Azeri national by the name of Hamid Hamidov. The investment was made to one of the competitions of the AIBA. However, AIBA maintained that there was no deal to fix
the two gold medals.
This is not the first boxing scandal that has hit Olympic boxing. The infamous Roy Jones incident was one that ricked the boxing world in during the 1988 Olympics.
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