Alleged “Fixer” of 2002 Olympic Figure Skating on ESPN
Source: ESPN
Apr 17, 2008 - 11:59:16 AM
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ESPN will present an exclusive interview with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, the alleged mastermind of the most notorious judging scandal in the 112-year annals of the modern Olympic Games -- the figure skating "fix" of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City – when he gives his first interview with non-Russian TV on Sunday’s Outside the Lines (9:30 a.m. ET ESPN; noon ESPNEWS).
Tokhtakhounov, under a U.S. indictment and on the wanted list internationally, tells Outside the Lines correspondent John Barr, who went to Moscow for the interview, "I would like the American audience to know the truth about me, that all that’s being written about me is completely untrue… [I'm] a successful businessman, a patron of the arts, a community worker. That’s what I call myself today."
Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov interviewed by John Barr
In addition to the interview with Tokhtakhounov, a prominent Russian sports official and A-list personality on the Moscow social scene, Canadian Olympians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier revisit the '02 episode, and Dennis Bolles, head of the FBI Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force, provides the government's first one-on-one interview on the case against Tokhtakhounov.
From Sunday’s show:
"Well, John Gotti said that. Paul Castellano said that. Members of the Gambino crime family said that." --Dennis Bolles, head of FBI Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force, on Tokhtakhounov stating he's a legitimate businessman
"What, they’ll give me 20 years and I’ll sit in prison? I’m 60, sentencing me to that is the same as giving me a life sentence." -- Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, on going to America to defend himself if he is indeed innocent
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