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talkpoliticsHere's a great interactive site designed by a Russian opposition leader, the anticorruption crusader Alexey Navalny http://sochi.fbk.info/en/ .
Putin has claimed that the price of the Olympics is approximately $7 billion, which is less than the original estimate made 7 years ago. Yet his government recognized that the original estimated has been repeatedly increased since then. So how could the increased number be less than the original one? The real cost was in the neighborhood of $50 billion, making Sochi 2014 the most expensive Olympics in history.
Putin has also claimed that most of the money invested into the Sochi 2014 project came from private investors. Another lie! Only 3.5% came from private sources, the rest was financed by the government.
But why are we talking about it? Maybe the Olympics were well worth the $50 billion? No, most of the monies spent by the Russian government (and one way or another they all came from the taxpayers' pockets) ended up in the offshore accounts of Putin's friends and friends' friends. These guys - most notably, his ex-judo team buddies Arkady and Boris Rotenbergs, head of the Russian Railway Company Vladimir Yakunin and some other thieves - received government contracts and made billions by inflating the costs and fooling everyone. How much was Putin's commission? We'll probably never know.
More info on the Olympics scam is available here (in Russian): http://navalny.livejournal.com/900762.html ;
Putin has claimed that the price of the Olympics is approximately $7 billion, which is less than the original estimate made 7 years ago. Yet his government recognized that the original estimated has been repeatedly increased since then. So how could the increased number be less than the original one? The real cost was in the neighborhood of $50 billion, making Sochi 2014 the most expensive Olympics in history.
Putin has also claimed that most of the money invested into the Sochi 2014 project came from private investors. Another lie! Only 3.5% came from private sources, the rest was financed by the government.
But why are we talking about it? Maybe the Olympics were well worth the $50 billion? No, most of the monies spent by the Russian government (and one way or another they all came from the taxpayers' pockets) ended up in the offshore accounts of Putin's friends and friends' friends. These guys - most notably, his ex-judo team buddies Arkady and Boris Rotenbergs, head of the Russian Railway Company Vladimir Yakunin and some other thieves - received government contracts and made billions by inflating the costs and fooling everyone. How much was Putin's commission? We'll probably never know.
More info on the Olympics scam is available here (in Russian): http://navalny.livejournal.com/900762.html ;
