Former First Vice President and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Russian Olympic Committee Akhmed Bilalov is accused with false charges

Moscow, Russia, 2020-Aug-10 — /EPR Network/ — Akhmed Bilalov was a member and an active participant of the Organizing Committee for the preparation of an application for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Also, he was a member Council under the President of the Russian Federation for the Development of Physical Culture and Sports in Russia; First Vice President and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Russian Olympic Committee. Sochi was the constituency area of Akhmed Bilalov, therefore, he became the initiator of the Olympic Games holding there. This helped the region to receive the necessary funds for building the high-speed railway, international airport, modern infrastructure, and hotels with the capacity of 50,000 rooms. Sochi became a new hot spot for sports and tourism. During that period a total of 260 projects were built and 60 billion invested.

In 2013, a criminal case was opened against Akhmed Bilalov in Russia under the 201 clause of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Exceeding Authority or Official Powers” accusing a successful Russian businessman and a respected politician in unjustified spending on foreign travels of the management of the North Caucasus Resorts. According to unconfirmed information from the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, for their flights to France, Great Britain, and other countries, Bilalov took a private jet and unreasonably spent budget funds.

The examples provided stated that the amount of 3 million rubles was spent on a trip to London. In August 2012, Bilalov, while holding the post of vice-president of the Russian Olympic Committee, flew to London on a private jet to present the project of the North Caucasus Resorts tourism cluster, which took place as part of the Summer Olympic Games in London. At the presentation of the project in the capital of Great Britain, members of the Russian Olympic team, representatives of the international Olympic movement, also, such influential people as Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Russia German Gref, and the President of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin were present.

Even though Bilalov’s position allowed him to take private jets, the round trip to London he paid on his own. This fact has been proven during the trial of the Bilalov detention in Miami. Interesting fact, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Kozak and his wife also the Governor of the Krasnodar Territory Alexander Tkachev and his wife flew to London on the same jet as Bilalov. For obvious reasons, they did not experience any accusations or charges.

In October 2019, Akhmed Bilalov was taken into custody in Florida by an officer of the US Customs and Immigration Service under the US Department of Homeland Security. Soon he was released, as a federal judge, after a detailed analysis of all the alleged facts that were illegally provided by the Russian law enforcement agencies to the American authorities, recognized the accusations as unfounded and brought forward by the Russian authorities for political persecution and pressure on Akhmed Bilalov to illegally seize all the assets of the Russian businessman.