Boris Nemtsov is a Russian dissident and politician. At the peak of his power, he was Russia’s minister of fuel and energy during the Boris Yeltsin years of the 1990s.
Since the rise of Vladimir Putin, however, Nemtsov has emerged as one of Putin’s most articulate and prominent critics. He has been arrested three times for participating in demonstrations against civil liberty restrictions in Russia under Putin.
Last year, on the eve of the Sochi winter Olympics, Nemtsov published a lengthy report examining why the cost of the Olympics reached a staggering (US) $53-billion – $10-billion more than the most expensive games ever held, the summer Olympics in Beijing.
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In 2007, Putin said the Sochi games would cost $12-billion. “Hence, we can draw an important conclusion,” says Nemtsov’s report “The … cost of the Sochi Olympics is an anomaly and can only be explained by banal thievery, corruption, embezzlement, and the complete lack of professionalism of those in charge. The cost of the Sochi Olympics, based on the global average, should have been (US) $24-billion (i.e., Putin’s $12 billion, multiplied by two). The remainder – (US) $26 billion – consisted of embezzlement and kickbacks.”
The report documents how a close circle of Putin’s friends received the bulk of the contracts to build the Sochi facilities.
“It has become increasingly clear that the Sochi Olympics are an unprecedented scam involving both representatives of Putin’s government and oligarchs close to the establishment.”
“This is a scam on a scale that outdoes Nikita Khrushchev’s reckless scheme to plant corn in the Russian Arctic or Leonid Brezhnev’s plans to reverse the tide of rivers in Siberia.”
“In effect, the Sochi Olympics have highlighted the main flaws of Putin’s system in a nutshell: Lawlessness, corruption, high-handedness, cronyism, incompetence, and irresponsibility.”
16X9’s “The Man Who Took on Putin” airs this Saturday at 7pm.
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