Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the country’s Audit Chamber to review bank lending to construction projects for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin said Friday.
The order comes a week after Vladimir Potanin, the head of the company building the Olympic ski resort, was forced to deny reports of hold-ups in loan payments by project's co-financier, state bank Vnesheconombank.
Nonetheless, the lending practices of Russian and foreign banks will be examined, Stepashin said.
“Today I received an order from Dmitry Anatolevich Medvedev to the chamber to undertake a close analysis of the functioning of our banks and foreign credit institutions from the perspective of the Sochi Olympics,” he said.
Speaking at a sports journalists’ forum in Sochi organized by RIA Novosti last week, Potanin said that his company, Interros, had underestimated the complexity of building the Olympic facilities.
“The main problem is that the Olympic project has turned out to be far bigger and more complicated than everyone suggested,” he said.
“If investors are being confronted with the problem of profitability, then they should extend financial support.”
“It’s not in the state’s interests that investors are ruined, especially when their difficulties have partly arisen from requirements that were not known to the Games organisers at the start of the process.”
Construction of Rosa Khutor will be completed on time, he emphasized.
The Games will run from February 7 through 23, with events taking place in two clusters, one the mountains above Sochi, the other just down the coast for skating events and curling.
