Boxing body vote could see sport thrown out of Olympics

MOSCOW: The congress of the scandal-hit International Amateur Boxing Federation (AIBA) that begins in Moscow on Friday may be a turning point for the sport and its future in the Olympics.

Gafur Rakhimov, an Uzbek who has been linked to organised crime by the US Treasury Department, is one of two candidates standing for the position of AIBA president at the meeting.

Rakhimov has vigorously denied US government allegations but in October the International Olympics Committee (IOC) froze relations with AIBA and refused to accredit Rakhimov to the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. The IOC move made it clear that it was prepared to kick the AIBA out of the Olympic movement and remove boxing from the 2020 Tokyo Games if the “governance problems” in the ruling body were not resolved.In February, the IOC said they were worried by the nomination of the Uzbek businessman for the AIBA interim presidency, a position he still occupies.