IOC To Hold Talks With The BBC

The International Olympic Committee are to hold talks with the BBC following Newsnight’s allegations on Thursday (Sept 22)that millions of dollars were paid out in an attempt to ensure two Gold medals were guaranteed to boxers from Azerbaijan at the London Olympics next year.

The International Amateur Boxing Association(AIBA) have launched an investigation after claims were made by Newsnight that payments of millions of dollars were made from an Azeri national to the AIBA’s World Series of Boxing competition in exchange for Gold medals.

The claims have strongly been denied by the AIBA.

An IOC statement issued on Friday said: "We welcome AIBA’s announcement of an immediate inquiry into these claims and we await the outcome of their investigation.

"For its part the IOC takes all allegations of corruption very seriously. And we would urge the BBC to make any evidence they have available to AIBA and to our ethics commission which will then determine if further action is necessary.

"We would also note that the judging process in boxing as in other sports at the Games are transparent and open to public scrutiny - and a number of sports including boxing have made significant changes to their procedures in recent years to deal with any potential issues."

It is not clear if the information gathered by the BBC’s Newsnight programme has yet been passed on to the IOC but a BBC has been quoted as saying: "We’re talking to the IOC at the moment about what we found out."

AIBA president Dr Ching-Kuo Wu branded the claims "totally untrue and ludicrous".

September 22, 2011