Russia vows crackdown on scalpers
MOSCOW, Nov 9, (AFP): Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev vowed on Thursday to crack down harshly on people who intended to profit from reselling their tickets to the 2018 World Cup.
The price of admission for the June 14-July 15 event ranges from 1,200 rubles ($22, 19 euros) for the nosebleed seats at the opening matches to 66,000 rubles for the best ones available for the grand finale.
Medvedev told a government meeting that Russia had assured the world football governing body FIFA it would stop scalpers in their tracks by imposing prohibitive fines at the marquee event.
The Kommersant newspaper said a law being drafted by the government slaps fines on individuals that could reach 25 times the price of the ticket’s face value.
Scalpers who get caught reselling the most expensive ones for the final at Moscow’s refurbished Luzhniki Stadium would thus have to cough up $28,000 — nearly four times the average annual salary reported by Russia’s statistics agency in July.
The government’s legislation must be submitted to the lower house of parliament — a rubber-stamp body controlled by the Kremlin — by Dec 18.
It then has to be approved by an equally pliant upper chamber before being signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia is keen to use the most watched television event in the world to showcase itself as a modern power that has shed corruption and other shadowy practises of its post-Soviet past.
The former deputy governor of Saint Petersburg has admitted to his involvement in a fraud scheme related to the construction of the city’s World Cup stadium, investigators said on Wednesday.
Marat Oganesyan, who served as deputy governor of Russia’s second largest city from 2013 to 2015, was detained last year on suspicion of orchestrating a fraudulent deal worth 50.4 million roubles ($849,915) that was meant to provide the venue with a video display screen.
Investigators said that Oganesyan had admitted guilt as part of a pre-trial agreement.
“He fully acknowledged his guilt in the act for which he was incriminated, gave exhaustive evidence and took steps to repay the damage caused,” the local branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.