This newsletter is exclusively for you, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. You are no longer an IOC member – not even one suspended. You have not been a member at all since the closing of the 144th session. Allow me to look back, respectfully, on the many years we spent together.
Samaranch or Coventry, that is the question. Coe was not only thwarted, his performance remained surprisingly poor, as if he himself had never believed in becoming IOC president. Lappartient, Watanabe, Eliasch and Feisal just don't want to come in last. The water level report.
The corruption allegations against the president of the Fédération Internationale de Hockey (FIH) are serious and bizarre. The case affects not only the FIH, but also OCA, as well as the IOC's core business: Olympic Solidarity. And here, as with several other IFs, the IOC is not taking action.
Today marks the beginning of a very long series: in a loose sequence, companies and people will be presented who work as henchmen, propagandists and other helpers for corrupt sports officials, mafia-like sports organisations and sports rogue states – for princely fees. Part 1: BDO.
He is the oligarch's all-purpose weapon in the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime (FIE). His CV is at least as interesting and controversial as his reputation. You must get to know Vitaly Logvin Grechuhin, shortly before FIE's election congress in his and Alisher Usmanov's hometown of Tashkent.
Will Thomas Bach have the Olympic Charter amended and begin a third term in office? Will he even step down once in this millennium? Who has he chosen as his successor? Many questions, important background information and some answers.
The prosecutor in the criminal trial against the former IBU president Anders Besseberg calls for an unconditional sentence of 3 years and 7 months in prison. The verdict will be handed down on 12 April. Besseberg describes himself as the victim of a hounding: like a "wild boar" that must be shot.
Did Husain Al-Musallam, president of World Aquatics, award a company owned by his wife and children contracts from public funds? Kuwait's sports authority has handed the case over to the public prosecutor's office. Did he also provide for his family from OCA accounts?
Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah, the long-time associate of IOC president Thomas Bach, loses both his ministerial post in Kuwait and also in the appeal proceedings against his prison sentence in Switzerland – but his penalty is reduced.
Anders Besseberg, former president of the International Biathlon Union, risks ten years in prison for corruption in a true Nordic Noir crime case that has exposed one of the largest sports scandals in the Nordic democracies in 25 years. Further investigations in other countries are still ongoing.
Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah has been sentenced to prison. Our author has observed the Kuwaiti Sheikh for many years and has been threatened by the Sheikh’s aides several times. He describes the methods that brought Ahmad to power and the implications of the conviction for Al-Sabah and the Olympic system.
