{"id":1699,"date":"2013-05-31T04:24:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T03:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2013-06-04T01:12:02","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T00:12:02","slug":"sochi-olympics-a-monstrous-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/1699\/","title":{"rendered":"Sochi Olympics a ‘Monstrous Scam’"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the opposition politicians<\/a>, anyway. \u00a0Me, I don’t believe it. \u00a0It just doesn’t seem credible.<\/p>\n

A lack of fair competition and secrecy sharply increased the cost, benefitting only businessmen close to President Vladimir Putin, they say in a report.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nonsense! \u00a0This sort of thing is entirely without precedent in Russia, which prides itself on transparency, open competition, and politicians who keep a healthy distance between themselves and commercial ventures.<\/p>\n

A Russian official dismissed the claim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See? \u00a0What more proof do you need?<\/p>\n

He also questioned the wisdom of staging the games in a subtropical climate in the city on the Black Sea coast.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not only are these opposition leaders attempting to tarnish the fine reputation of the IOC, they are killjoys to boot.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman Mark Adams said it appeared that Russia was taking any corruption claims related to the Olympics seriously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And if the word of a Russian official wasn’t enough, who can doubt the purity and sincerity of an IOC spokesman?<\/p>\n

Mr Adams said Moscow was addressing the issue “pretty much head-on from the president down”, according to the Associated Press news agency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well there you have it. \u00a0If the president is involved, how can there possibly be a problem?<\/p>\n

“The expenses for the Winter Olympics in Sochi turned out to be more than all expenses for all the sports structures at the previous 21 Winter Olympics put together,” the report says.<\/p>\n

It says that “between $25bn and $30bn have been stolen”, and this has benefited “only oligarchs and companies close to Mr Putin”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You say stolen, I say invested wisely. \u00a0This is purely semantics.<\/p>\n

Nothing to see here, folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the opposition politicians, anyway. \u00a0Me, I don’t believe it. \u00a0It just doesn’t seem credible. A lack of fair competition and secrecy sharply increased the cost, benefitting only businessmen close to President Vladimir Putin, they say in a report. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1701,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions\/1701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}