Drakenberg challenges the oligarch for the chairmanship

Two years ago, Otto Drakenberg caused a stir when he stood up for human rights at the FIE conference. Now he has decided to challenge the leadership of the society.

Drakenberg is one of two candidates. The other is Alisher Usmanov, the suspended FIE president, who surprisingly announced this week that he intended to return.

Usmanov, born in Uzbekistan and living in Russia, he became chairman in 2008 and was re-elected three times. The billionaire is believed to have strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and was one of the oligarchs sanctioned by the EU after Russia invaded Ukraine. He then chose to suspend himself from FIE. The association has since been led by an interim chairman, the Greek Emmanuel Katsiadakis.

Ana Valero-Collantes, a former board member of the Swedish Fencing Association, is one of the people responsible for the campaign to elect Otto Drakenberg.

– From a European point of view, we have been working to get a good candidate and we are very happy that Otto is running, she says.

The Swedish chairman has made himself famous for his criticism of FIE and has been praised for his defense of fair play, but is said to be a controversial candidate in some circles. When Drakenberg stood up for human rights at the 2023 Congress, many countries did their best to silence him from the podium. The video, in which representatives can be heard booing and clapping their hands on the table, went viral.

Even at the 2021 conference, it was full of conflict, when Usmanov urged the delegates not to vote for the Swedish proposal on new qualification rules for the Olympics.

Valero-Collantes explains that they decided to nominate Drakenberg even before they knew Usmanov was a candidate. She says that it was only this week that the application became official through the FIE website and, although there had been rumours, it was a surprise.

– It is still suspended by the EU, so I wonder if it is really worthy, says Valero-Collantes.

71-year-old Usmanov is said to have pumped SEK 70 million annually into the association during his years as a fencer, which made him very popular. In a statement, he claims that he had the support of 103 of the 156 countries that were members of FIE and therefore a clear majority.

“A sign of confidence and recognition of what international fencing has achieved in the past 15 years,” Usmanov said in a statement.

The FIE conference will take place in the oligarch’s home country of Uzbekistan at the end of November.

Usmanov recently sued the German television channel ARD, which said that the FIE bribed judges before the Olympics in Paris. A court in Hamburg ruled in his favor at the beginning of October, preventing ARD from publishing the allegations while fining the television channel.

DN is looking for Otto Drakenberg.