The Uzbek businessman is expected to be named Aiba’s new president and wants to clear his name before securing the sport’s Olympic future
He is blacklisted by the US treasury, which has accused him of being one of Uzbekistan’s “leading criminals” with “links to the heroin trade”. Yet Gafur Rakhimov, the man expected to be elected as the president of amateur boxing’s governing body on Saturday, says he will clear his name – and then lift his sport off the ropes.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, Rakhimov also claims that Aiba had been “days away from bankruptcy” earlier this year and accepted that relations with the International Olympic Committee – which has warned that a full boxing programme at Tokyo 2020 is in “jeopardy” under Aiba – were in a bad way.
Written by Sean Ingle
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/oct/29/gafur-rakhimov-boxing-aiba-olympic under the title “Prospective amateur boxing president: ‘I have never been involved in criminal activities’”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
