Fear is the key -- Erstwhile Soviet Union turns blood red

Fear is the key -- Erstwhile Soviet Union turns blood red
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 21: Russian's hockey supremo is shot down in a hail of bullets, a Ukrainian Football Club president is blown up, a well-known Georgian wrestler is shot dead.

The playing fields of the former Soviet sporting world have turned into something of a killing field for shady operators with cash to launder and scores to settle.

Contract killings, money laundering, arrests of officials on suspicion of corruption and extortion... Sport in the former Soviet Union has in recent years been plagued by a string of dark and deadly incidents far removed from the notion of sport in most countries.

The problem traces its origins to the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991 and the economic crisis that ensued, which resulted in a severe lack of funding for sports clubs that used to benefit from handsome backing from the Soviet army, police and the country's trade unions in Soviet times.

The lack of legal funding forced sport clubs and their presidents to dip into the murky world of shadowy business, which inturn found ports clubs and foundations a useful way to launder their dirty cash.

The first sign that something was rotten in post-Soviet sport emerged in April 1994, when a hired gunman cut down Otari Kvantrishvili, president of a Sports Foundation who also controlled Russia's Wrestling Federation.

Since then, the contract killings have occurred with depressing regularity.

Russian Ice Hockey Federation president Valentin Sych was killed by gunmen in April 1997, while the president of the National Sports Foundation, Boris Fyodorov, was badly wounded in an organised hit the previous year.

One of the bosses of Spartak Moscow Football Club, Larisa Nechayeva, who ran the outfit's finances, was also killed by hired gunmen at her countryhouse in the summer of 1997.

In Ukraine meanwhile, the former president of Donetsk Football side Shakhtyor, Akhat Bragin, was blown up in the VIP box of the city's stadium during a league match in 1995.

And just last week in Moldova, Valery Rymar, president of FootballClub Constructorul, was killed in a hail of bullets from an automatic weapon. Rymar, it later emerged, hailed from the criminal underworld with a street nickname `Green' and a 10-year stretch in jail behind him.

Beyond the contract killings lies a murky world of extortion and official corruption.

The Ukrainian Wrestlers Association's president Boris Savlogov was arrested earlier this year and is still being held in prison on extortion charges. He faces an eight-year jail term if found guilty.

Last month, the president of the Ukraine's top flightside Tavria Simferopol, Ruvim Aronov, was arrested and charged with extortion by the local police.

Not even government ministers are entirely clean. Russian Sports Minister Boris Ivanyuzhenkov admitted recently that before his appointment last year he had been charged with unauthorised possession of a handgun and accused of being a member of Moscow's notorious Podolsk criminal group.