THE GENERAL SECRETARY of Ukraine’s National Olympic Committee has been suspended after a BBC investigation alleged that he was planning to sell tickets on the black market.
Volodymyr Gerashchenko allegedly told a BBC reporter posing as a UK tout that he would be prepared to sell up to 100 tickets upon arrival in the UK in July.
When approached by the BBC with this information Gerashchenko said that he had never planned to sell the tickets in the UK and that he was merely being ‘diplomatic’ with who he thought was a ‘persistent’ dealer, and that he had no intention of going through with the deal.
It is a crime to sell tickets for London 2012 to touts and tickets can only be sold in countries outside the EU to residents within that country, according to the BBC report. Ukraine’s Olympic Committee had received almost 3,000 tickets for distribution.
The Ukrainian English-language newspaper Kyiv Post reports that the vice president of the country’s National Olympic Committee has said the situation could be a ‘provocation’. Viktor Korzh told reporters that if the allegations turn out to be true, Gerashchenko will lose his job.
Olympic champion Sergei Bubka, who is the president of Ukraine’s committee, is to launch an investigation into the incident.
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