Putin suggests Russia's Olympic funds were misspent

Published January 08, 2015

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Money earmarked for Russia's Vancouver Olympics preparations might have been misspent, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

"Maybe the money was spent not on what was needed but instead on what someone wanted to spend it on," Putin told top sports officials he summoned for a grilling about Russia's worst-ever performance at a Winter Games.

Putin said Russia had spent five times as much money on last month's Winter Games as on the 2006 Turin Olympics, where its team won 22 medals, eight of them gold.

In Vancouver, the country won three golds and a total of 15 medals, a result that has stunned Russians and dominated public discourse in the longtime winter-sports powerhouse where Olympic competition retains an echo of Cold War rivalry with the West.

Putin, who led Russia's successful drive to win the right to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a Black Sea resort where he often skis, did not say how much had been spent on Vancouver.

On Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev called on top sports officials to resign or face dismissal over the Vancouver showing. Only one, Russian Olympic Committee chief Leonid Tygachyov, has heeded the warning.

(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Clare Fallon)

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