On Thursday, a shocking revelation from an investigation that was conducted by the International Boxing Association, AIBA, shocked the entire boxing federation and fans alike. The association had hired, Richard McLaren, to carry out the investigation. Richard found out that the AIBA officials had selected referees and judges for the boxing bouts at the Rio Olympics in 2016. The officials had developed a “culture of fear and intimidation among the ranks of referees and judges”. Richard is not sure how many matches had been fixed but he has so far guessed that around 11 boxing bouts were manipulated. These could include the final as well as the semifinal matches.
During the 2016 Rio Olympics, AIBA came under fire when Ireland’s Michael Conlan accused the association of corruption after the judges ruled in favor of Russia’s Vladimir Nikitin. Richard has not mentioned about the said match being fixed or not.
The referees and judges who were found guilty of manipulating matches were suspended by AIBA. They were not part of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
The boxing matches were fixed in a protected area away from prying eyes
The selected referees and judges were told who they have helped win the day before the fight was to go down. All this scheming used to take place in a protected lounge area. Richard has not been able to identify the mastermind behind all these match fixing, but he mentioned the elaborate filtering scheme that weeded out the honest referees and judges.
The staff only selected those referees and judges who were willing to turn a blind away to all the manipulation or was not bothered to follow the rules to ensure a fair playing ground for the players.
During one such match fixing, a Mongolian boxer offered a bribe of $250,000 to the judges and the referees to win the bout against a French boxer during the semifinals. Later on, the Mongolian boxer lost after receiving low scores from all the judges.
Apparently the International Olympic Committee is not happy with AIBA and had organised the entire boxing event in this year’s Olympics.