Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 22 – Just as was
the case with the Sochi Olympics in 2014, Vladimir Putin’s regime has already
spent far more on preparations for the 2018 World Cup than any other host country
in history, not only boost his and Russia’s prestige but also and perhaps even
more important to use the event to pay off his cronies, Sergey Mitrokhin says.
The Yabloko Party of which Mitrokhin
is a leader has prepared a listing of how much and where Moscow has spent money
getting the venue cities ready – for the numbers, see yabloko.ru/lp/gold/
-- and he reports that in the competition for spending, “Russia is the champion
(echo.msk.ru/blog/sergei_mitrohin/2133212-echo/).
According to the Yabloko
calculations, Russia has spent on the construction or reconstruction of the
eleven main arenas for the World Cup 212.5 billion rubles (3.5 billion US
dollars), a figure “almost 100 billion rubles [1.6 billion US dollars) greater”
that other governments would have spent to do the same thing.
The Russian government has not
released a listing of the general contractors for these jobs, Mitrokhin
continues, but it certainly consists “almost entirely of the friends and
comrades in arms of Putin.” And the
difference between what the construction should have cost and what it did
almost certainly has ended up corruptly in their pockets.
The 2018 World Cup “just like the 2014
Sochi Olympiad,” of course, “has two goals: One of them is ‘an orgy of prestige,’”
which in this case Russia is unlikely to get even the short-term boost it did
after the drug scandals put paid to its “winning.” And “the other is ‘a Bacchanalia of diversion’”
of state funds into the hands of the oligarchs.
This money “will not make any
contribution to the development of mass sport,” Mitrokhin says; and it is
offensive not only because of the massive corruption but also because of the ways
that this money could have been better used to assist Russians overcome the
hard times they are now experiencing.
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