Major power
Russian officials say the country’s representation in international sporting bodies reflects its role as a major global sporting power and the private philanthropy of some of its businessmen.
In the case of fencing, not only is Usmanov the president of the governing body, he is also the founder of the International Charity Fund for the Future of Fencing, which the fencing federation identifies as one of its three sponsors. The second sponsor is Megafon, a Russian telecoms company majority-owned by Usmanov.
A spokesman for the International Fencing Federation said in response to questions from Reuters that a statement was being prepared. Usmanov’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
United World Wrestling, which governs the two Olympic disciplines of Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling, is led by Nenad Lalovic, a Serbian businessman whose biography on the federation’s website describes him as a “current partner” in a “construction company that operated in Russia”.
Although the biography does not name his firm, a company filing lodged with the Nevada state authorities in the United States named Nenad Lalovic as president of a firm called PSP-Farman Corp.
The US firm was dissolved in 2002, according to the Nevada filing. But PSP-Farman is also the name of a Serbian-Russian construction group which still operates and which says on its website it has won contracts from, among other clients, Russia’s central bank, Russian stateowned gas exporter Gazprom , and state broadcaster Russia Today.
Reuters was not able to establish what role if any Lalovic now holds with the company, but his son and daughter have both worked there.
Company records for Jugodrvo Holding, a part of the PSP-Farman group based in Belgrade, list Milos Lalovic as a shareholder in Jugodrvo. A woman who answered the phone in the Belgrade offices of the group identified Milos Lalovic as the son of Nenad Lalovic and said the younger man worked there, although she did not say what his role was.
The wrestling federation boss’s daughter Nina Lalovic says on her LinkedIn profile that she worked in sales and marketing for PSP-Farman from May 2011 to September 2012, and later worked for three years in the Belgrade offices of NIS Gazpromneft, a Serbian unit of Gazpromneft, a Russian state oil producer.
United World Wrestling did not respond to questions from Reuters. Lalovic did not reply to messages sent to his federation email address. Branislav Grujic, a joint president of PSP-Farman, did not respond to email messages or calls to his mobile telephone.
Nenad Lalovic issued a statement on Tuesday via United World Wrestling saying that the body was starting a process to “validate” each Russian wrestler qualified for Rio to ensure they were not implicated in doping.