By: Tariq Panja and Ken Belson
The International Olympic Committee is moving toward expelling boxing’s international federation, a step that could imperil one of the tent-pole events of the Summer Olympics at the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
Controversy has for years plagued the boxing federation, which is known by the acronym A.I.B.A. Then last month, a man the United States Treasury Department has described as “one of Uzbekistan’s leading criminals” won the A.I.B.A. presidency and took control of the world governing body.
That man, Gafur Rakhimov, a Russian citizen, had been A.I.B.A.’s interim leader after his predecessor, C. K. Wu, was forced out following a financial scandal that pushed the organization to the brink of bankruptcy. The scandal raised questions — many still unanswered — regarding the whereabouts of millions of dollars of A.I.B.A. revenue.