The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) is moving its headquarters from Budapest to Lausanne, according to a report from sports website insidethegames.biz.
According to the report, the federation’s executive board has extended the mandate of Ursula Papandrea, who was appointed the IWF’s acting president in January. She will be leading the federation together with USA Weightlifting chief executive Phil Andrews, who has temporarily been named deputy director general of the IWF, the website said.
The federation’s former president, Tamás Aján, resigned his position last week. Aján, who had served as the IWF’s general secretary from 1976 to 2000 and its president over the past 20 years, asked for his suspension in January while an independent investigation was carried out into allegations of graft levelled against him and the sport in a documentary broadcast by German state broadcaster ARD. The documentary aired on January 5 said weightlifting was fraught with systematic doping, going on with the knowledge of the IWF which had commissioned the Hungarian anti-doping body (MACS) with supervising all large-scale competitions and almost all world championships. The film also alleged that since 1992, 23 million dollars have been transferred to two Swiss bank accounts connected to Aján, with no record of the monies in IWF ledgers. Aján and MACS both rejected the allegations.
hungarymatters.hu
