LONDON -- They’ve been painting the Olympic rings on the new roads built around Sochi.
They may as well have been dollar signs for what they cost: just shy of $9
billion. It's become a local joke that the roads would have been cheaper if
they'd been paved with caviar.
Valery Morozov
CBS News
Olympic
spending
records have also been set for the new venues along the coast and up
in the mountains outside of Sochi. A new report by a Russian
anti-corruption
group says the total cost for the games has soared to about $50 billion
-- more than five times as much as the last winter games.
Yet
the best place to discover why costs have risen so high may not be among the
gleaming new venues, but on a street in a town just outside London, where Valery
Morozov, once an Olympic contractor -- now a fugitive -- lives.
He's
fled Russia for fear of his life, he told CBS News, because he couldn’t stand
the corruption anymore.
"I
was informed that there is a contract on my assassination," he said. Not
because he knew too much and could finger other people, but because, he said,
"They miscalculated me."
Miscalculated,
he said, because the local Olympic organizers told him to add about $30 million
to his bill for various Sochi construction projects, and then pay that money
back to them as kickbacks.
"The
only one reason for this was their pockets," Morozov said. "There was
only one reason."
Morozov rebuilt some of the crumbling facilities of the old Sochi
resort. The kickbacks, he said, followed a familiar formula. The
kickback was about 40 percent of the total contract.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin has said those who claim there's corruption should
prove it. But with a suspect bidding process, little public accountability and the
corruption running to high places, Valery Morozov said there is no incentive to
investigate -- and nothing but trouble for anyone who tries.
Mark
Phillips returned to the CBS News London bureau as a correspondent in
1993. He has covered many major stories since then, including the war in
the Balkans, the death of Princess Diana and the weapons inspection
conflicts in Iraq.
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