Boxing Aims to Become Model Federation

(ATR) Olympic boxing federation AIBA says it believes the IOC will react positively to changes being made that address a host of concerns.

Executive Director Tom Virgets tells Around the Rings that AIBA has completed its responses to 17 questions posed by the IOC in a letter sent to the federation in May. Some responses were already sent in July. This final report takes into account the AIBA Congress earlier this month, where delegates voted on changes to statutes as well as new officers for the federation.

"The document addresses AIBAs improvements in five areas. Governance, Finances, Ethics, Refereeing and Judging and Anti-doping," says Virgets.

"I am very confident that the Executive Board of the IOC will recognize the incredible positive changes that AIBA has made in each of these areas over the past six months. We are very proud of the advances we have made towards becoming a model International Federation," says the AIBA exec.

Virgets tells ATR that by mutual agreement with the IOC, AIBA will not release its responses to the IOC demands until the IOC Executive Board meets in three weeks. The EB meeting in Tokyo is supposed to take actionon the AIBA situation, one year after the IOC EB put the federation on notice that boxing could be at risk for the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

In its ruling last year, the IOC suspended payments due the federation and restricted contact between IOC and AIBA to resolving the outstanding issues.

The election of Gafur Rakhimov as AIBA president at the congress in Moscow last month will be a major issue in the IOC review. Rakhimov, who has a long association with AIBA, is also identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a suspected member of a Russian organized crime organization. Rakhimov denies the association, but the IOC Ethics and Compliance officer has advised that Rakhimov was not qualified to serve as federation president as a result.

AIBA dropped into a leadership freefall last year when reports surfaced that obligations arranged by then president C.K. Wu threatened to bankrupt the federation. Faced with an uprising by the ruling Executive Committee, Wu resigned after serving 11 years as AIBA president. He remains a member of the IOC.

The AIBA EC nominated Rakhimov to serve as interim president in January. That move triggered new IOC concerns that have become more acute with Rakhimov’s decisive election to a full four year term on Nov. 2.

Reported by Ed Hula.