Director of the EuroBasket 2015 tournament Markiyan Lubkivsky has said that local committee isn't a governmental organization and isn't funded from the state budget of Ukraine.
“We’re not a governmental organization and don’t use a kopek of
governmental money for our activity. We exist by means of donor funding,
and the number [of these donors] is rather large,” he said during the
press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Lubkivsky expressed gratitude to the Youth and Sports Minister Dmytro
Bulatov for his concern about the tournament’s future, but said he
thinks that Bulatov’s employees hadn’t prepared him well enough for the
press conference on March 24, when the minister talked about
unreasonable expenditures of the local EuroBasket 2015 committee.
Lubkivsky said that the preparations for holding the 2013 European
basketball tournament for 16-year-old players in Kyiv had cost EUR 1.6
million instead of the EUR 2 million stated by the minister, and FIBA
Europe had declared that championship the best in history of the
tournaments in this age category.
According to Lubkivsky, the competition hall in the Palace of Sports
had to be divided into two parts with a soundproof wall, and twice as
much light and sound equipment had to be used for that championship to
be conducted. In addition all the games of the tournament were broadcast
over the Internet, and the finals, along with games of Ukrainian
national team, on central TV.
“I’m ready to account for every kopek spent from donor funding, and
interfering with the operation of the NGO Federation of Basketball of
Ukraine and its subsidiary, the local EuroBasket 2015 committee, is not
under the minister’s competence at the moment,” Lubkivsky said.
Commenting on the Bulatov’s statement about artificially high
salaries in the Organizing Committee of EuroBasket 2015, the Director of
the tournament said, “I’d rather I had the salary I used to have when I
was working on Euro 2012 at the UEFA. My current salary is much lower.”
In turn, President of the Basketball Federation of Ukraine Oleksandr
Volkov noted that Lubkivsky had been highly praised for organizing the
European Football Championship 2012 in Ukraine, when he’d been the
director of the tournament.
“I don’t think there are any experts whose knowledge of the subject
is anywhere close to his. We work together and there are questions just
like in any family. We argue and everyone expresses his or her opinion,”
Volkov said.
As reported, during the press conference on March 24 Bulatov said
that there would be an investigation into the amount of money that had
been requested by the Organizing Committee of the 2015 European
Basketball Championship.
The minister also said that EuroBasket championship among youth in 2013 had cost EUR 2 million.
“For comparison, Lithuania spent EUR 400,000 on a similar tournament,
France – EUR 1 million, Latvia – EUR 500,000 and Slovenia – EUR
550,000. Obviously, all the prices and balance sheets were artificially
high, [and] there are signs of corruption in there,” he said.
Bulatov also said that the salaries in the Organizing Committee are
1.5 times larger than the highest salaries in western companies.
