Olympic bill nothing compared to Sochi's
If you think Vancouver's Winter Olympics were expensive, you should check out the mounting bills in Russia, where they're blowing so many rubles out the door they make the budget for our little party look like a peewee shinny tournament.
Costs for the Sochi 2014 Games are exploding due to blown construction budgets, soaring security bills, unforeseen costs to deal with the semitropical location and – especially – rampant corruption, the Moscow Times reports.
The bill for the Sochi Games could end up costing Russian taxpayers an astonishing $41 billion, Aleksei Skopin, of the Moscow School of Higher Economics, told the newspaper.
Compare that to the $6 billion some critics pegged as the total cost of the Vancouver Games – a figure the government disputed as too high, because it included indirect costs like the Sea-to-Sky Highway upgrade.
But even if you throw in the cost of the highway, the convention centre, the Canada Line and the kitchen sink, it appears B.C. taxpayers still got an Olympic bargain compared to what's going on in Russia.
A team of Vancouver Olympic executives recently travelled to Sochi to check out the preparations and give advice to their Russian counterparts.
Despite earlier suggestions the Sochi Games were in danger of collapse, Vancouver 2010 construction boss Dan Doyle left convinced the Russians would be ready to throw the world's next winter extravaganza. "I looked at the quality of the workmanship, the quality of their scheduling, whether they're getting it done ahead of time," said Doyle, now the chairman of B.C. Hydro. "There's no doubt they'll have the venues ready for the Games."
But at a huge price. Russian media reports point to rampant corruption infecting Sochi projects, more than doubling their cost. Bribes and kickbacks drove the cost of one 50-kilometre highway to nearly $8 billion, reports the Russian edition of Esquire magazine.
"This is now one of the world's most expensive roads and a symbol of corruption," said Sochi native Boris Nemtsov, Russia's former deputy premier.
"Billions of dollars have simply disappeared."
Sochi's geographical location also has critics worried about a 2014 weather disaster that will make the melting snow on Cypress Mountain look like a playground puddle.
"Sochi is subtropical," Nemtsov told Foreign Policy magazine. "He [Prime Minister Vladimir Putin] has found one of the only places in Russia where there is no snow in the winter. He has decided to build these ice rinks in the warmest part of the warmest region."
Not to worry. I'm sure Doyle told the Russians to keep those straw bales handy!
Then there's the fear of terrorism, which some Russian critics think the government will use to justify the soaring cost of the Games and a possible crackdown on Islamic militants in the region.
But the biggest concerns remain corruption and organized crime, which one Russian news site said could turn the Sochi Games into the "most expensive in history."
"These Olympics will be an economic catastrophe," Nemtsov predicted.
Think you got burned on our Winter Olympics, B.C. taxpayers? Count yourselves lucky.
