I'm curious if any country has sanctioned (in the negative sense of the word) some specific international sports body. Surely controversies have been numerous over the years, ranging from corruption scandals to outrageous comments. Has any county taken the step to subject to sanctions an internationals sports body or their leadership?
asked Aug 10 at 15:43
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1I'm quite aware that the opposite case where an international sports organization 'sanctions' a country by suspending their athletes is probably more common, so I'm not asking about that.– Make StackExchange GREAT 4everCommented Aug 10 at 16:01
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2The 1980 boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow is an interesting edge case: it was initially demanded by the US and other Western governments as part of the sanctions against the USSR for its invasion of Afghanistan, but since it was on the National Olympic Committees to decide about participation, the governments were mostly relegated to "recommendations", or, in the case of the US government, threats with tax penalties.– ccprogCommented Aug 10 at 19:01
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2 Answers
FIDE
The International Chess Federation has some strong links to Russia, and its leadership has included some Russian businessmen and politicians over time. Especially since 2015 this had consequences for its president.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was president of Kalmykia between 1993 and 2010 and FIDE president from 1995 to 2018. His apparent friendship with dictators like Muammar al-Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein had brought him into conflict with the USA before, but his support for Baschar al-Assad was one too many, and in 2015 the US Treasury added him and his bank Russian Financial Alliance to a sanction list for "Financial Facilitation and Procurement" for the Syrian government. Ilyumzhinov was forced to withdraw from any legal, financial and business operations of FIDE and leave all FIDE business to his deputy. Nonetheless, Swiss bank UBS cut its ties with FIDE in 2018 because of the sanctions against Ilyumzhinov.
The new president since 2018, Arkady Dvorkovich, Chairman of the Board of Russian Railways, again has close ties with the Russian government, but I could not find any hint he was personally included in sanctions. Maybe his initially critical remarks on the war against the Ukraine (since then relativised) spared him.
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One could have surmised IBA head Umar Kremlev might have been sanctioned too, but I can't find any evidence of that. IBA was kicked out ('derecognized') by the IOC last year. But the previous IBA head, Gafur Rakhimov was "placed on a 2012 US treasury sanctions list over alleged ties to a criminal organization and heroin trafficking, charges he has denied." motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/… Commented Aug 11 at 1:15
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That happened in 2012 though and he was elected IBA head in 2018 despite the sanctions, apparently. So, not quite the right order of cause and effect to be an answer. Commented Aug 11 at 1:22
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@timetakesitstoll thanks for finding that one. I knew there was something boxing related, but couldn't remember what organization.– ccprogCommented Aug 11 at 1:26
There were a variety of sanctions of organisations within the the apartheid regime in South Africa during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. These included sporting boycotts:
The international federations (IFs) governing various sports began to sanction South Africa, both in response to the new restrictions and in reflection of the broader anti-racism of national federations in newly independent postcolonial states.
There were a number of 'rebel' cricket tours by an unofficial England teams. Sanctions were imposed against individual players. For example in 1981...
The rebels, who numbered 15 after hiring three further players to cover injuries, all received three-year bans from international cricket. These suspensions ended the careers of more than half the squad including Geoffrey Boycott, the world's leading Test run-scorer at that time.
