A new site defines the Champions of Corruption at the Sochi Winter Games.
The site asserts:
Athletes are not the only people who compete in Sochi. Officials and businessmen also took part in the Games and turned them into a source of income. The Anti-Corruption Foundation honored the most distinguished money siphoners in five different sports
Classic Embezzlement, Arkady Rotenberg
Verbal Freestyle, Vladimir Putin
Ecological Multi-Sport, Vladimir Yakunin
Pair Contract, Alexander Tkachyov and Roman Batalov
Figure Lending, Vladimir Potanin
The site is ostensibly anti-corruption but the objectives are clearly political:
The Australian. Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who ran for mayor of Moscow last September, has used the site to combine data gathered during his own investigations with media accounts and other activists’ reports. According to Mr Navalny’s Encyclopaedia of Spending, the athletes are not the only people who compete: “Officials and businessmen also took part in the Games and turned them into a source of income.”
His site honours five “champions of corruption”, including President Vladimir Putin, who is accused of lying about the cost of the project when he claimed it was $US6.5 billion. Mr Putin has rejected the claims.