Putin Friend Bags at Least 21 Russian Olympic Contracts

Arkady Rotenberg, the boyhood friend and former judo partner of black-belt President Vladimir Putin, already is collecting his winnings from 2014’s Winter Olympics. Rotenberg’s companies have been awarded at least 227 billion rubles ($7.4 billion) worth of contracts for the Sochi Games, according to figures compiled from corporate and government filings. That’s more than the entire budget for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, though it represents just 15 percent of Russia’s latest estimate for the event, which promises to be the most expensive ever.

His contracts, which number at least 21, include a share of an $8.3 billion transport link between Sochi and ski resorts in the Caucasus Mountains, a $2.1 billion highway along the Black Sea, a $387 million media center, and a $133 million stretch of tarmac that will link various venues and double as Russia’s first Formula 1 track. “This is a monumental waste of public money,” says Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan who tracks Olympic spending. “A small number of people at the top have control of resources, and there’s no accountability.” Russia is the most corrupt of the Group of 20 economies, according to Berlin-based Transparency International.