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America's Roy Jones, right, lost his final middleweight bout against Korea's Park Si-hun in 1988 despite landing more than twice as many punches. The judges who voted for Park were suspended. Photograph: Ron Kuntz/AP
America's Roy Jones, right, lost his final middleweight bout against Korea's Park Si-hun in 1988 despite landing more than twice as many punches. The judges who voted for Park were suspended. Photograph: Ron Kuntz/AP

Azerbaijan 'paid $9m for London 2012 Olympic boxing golds'

This article is more than 12 years old
Head of governing body announces investigation after BBC alleges that Azerbaijan paid $9m in return for Olympic golds

The governing body that oversees world boxing has promised to launch an immediate investigation into allegations that its subsidiary accepted millions of dollars in return for a promise of guaranteed gold medals at the London 2012 Olympics.

The BBC claimed that whistleblowers said the head of World Series Boxing, the ambitious attempt by the International Amateur Boxing Association (Aiba) to launch a global amateur series to rival the professional code, had accepted $9m (£5.85m) from Azerbaijan in return for a promise it would win two golds in the London games.

Aiba, which organises the judging and administration of the sport at the Olympics, admitted that an Azeri national paid $9m to WSB to invest in its American franchises. But lawyers for Aiba told the BBC the allegation that medals were bought was "preposterous and utterly untrue".

World Series Boxing was launched in a blaze of publicity last year but had been rumoured to be struggling financially.

The BBC claims to have emails showing the investment agreement was presented to Azerbaijan government officials and asked for the money to be paid to the WSB American operations. Aiba said the money was from an unnamed investor but was routed through the government.

The BBC said whistleblowers claimed the money was promised in return for two gold medals by WSB chief operating officer Ivan Khodabakhsh.

He said: "First of all no comment, second of all, it's an absolute lie."

Aiba president Dr Ching-Kuo Wu, who has repeatedly claimed that he has ushered in a new transparent era for boxing, said the claims were "totally untrue", "ludicrous" and "totally impossible".

But he said Aiba had a "zero tolerance" policy to corruption and would launch an immediate investigation.

"I want you to know ... how much effort I put in to clean the house. Four vice-presidents, a secretary general, six [members of the] executive committee, all expelled because of wrongdoing." Wu told Newsnight. "Any corruption or manipulation is totally unacceptable. We have been cleaning the house for the last four years. I can guarantee you Aiba, like the other international federations, is fighting corruption."

But he added: "If something happened, we will definitely investigate. If this is a true story we will immediately fire Ivan. There is no way we can accept it."

The International Olympic Committee, whose president Jacques Rogge has been vocal on the fight against corruption in sport, urged the BBC to hand over any relevant evidence.

"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."

"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."

Aiba and WSB said in a statement they believed the allegations had been "made by individuals with an axe to grind, who are totally discredited". They added: "As well as unjustifiably imputing corruption to AIBA/WSB, they demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of the procedures which lead to the award of Olympic boxing medals and the impossibility of influencing these."

The allegations will put the judging in next summer's boxing competition, for which all the tickets so far put on sale have sold out, under the spotlight. Like other sports that rely on subjective judging, Olympic boxing has previously faced allegations of one fighter being unfairly favoured over another.

The most notorious incident related to Roy Jones' light-middleweight final against South Korea's Park Si-Hun in Seoul in 1988.

Despite landing more than twice as many punches as his opponent, Jones lost the verdict on a 3-2 split among the five judges. All three judges who ruled in favour of the South Korean were subsequently suspended.The IOC pointed out that changes had been made in recent years to make the judging process more transparent.

"We would 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."

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