31Jul

Red Mafia & Black Mafia: Asian Police-Political Theater and Sports Gambling

There are two events occurring in Asia that show the close links between organized crime and top government officials. 

The first is in Hong Kong. The territory - nominally, an independent part of China under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ agreement hammered out with the departing Brits in 1997, is in the grip of a series of demonstrations protesting new legislation allowing the extradition of criminal suspects to China. The demonstrations were mostly peaceful until organized crime (the Triads) got...

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09Nov

Communists, Criminals or Both? The October Revolution

The door is thick and well padded, but it was not enough to protect the leaders of the first Russian revolution. It is located in a room in the labyrinth-like Hermitage Palace on the seafront of Saint Petersburg. Today, the Hermitage is the world’s largest museum. In October 1917, it was the headquarters of the Mensheviks – a weak, social democratic government. The Mensheviks had overthrown Czar Nicholas II a few months before and captured his vast palace. Unable to govern effectively,...

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18Jul

Russian Doping & Fixing: A Normal Way of Business

In the light of Richard McLaren's report on doping in Russia.  Here is a backgrounder from The Fix on corruption in Russian sports.  Kaliningrad is a grim, grey city stuck at the far western end of Russia. It is full of crumbling dockyards, high unemployment, and mobsters. The city is an odd outpost of the remains of the Soviet Empire. It is a Russian Baltic port, completely cut off from the rest of country and wedged between Lithuania and...

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17Jun

Sports and the Russian Mafia

On the news that the Russian track and field athletes are banned from the Rio Olympics. Good decision. Two points, five lessons and the links between sports and the Russian Mafia. The Russian anti-doping system in sport was largely a sham: a Potemkin village of a program designed to give the appearance of an effective fight but in reality enabling widespread doping among their athletes. At the very heart of athleticism and the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) that was a criminal...

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