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SOCHI, July 14 (Itar-Tass) — Olympstroi Corporation has ensured a high level of safety at construction sites, and its experience should be further used during the 2014 Olympic Games. This opinion was expressed on Thursday at an onsite meeting on the legal regulation of the creation of an integrated security at Olympic facilities by chairman of the Defence and Security Committee of the Federation Council upper house of parliament Viktor Ozerov.
At present, 350 employees of the Olymp private security company, as well as 70 private security officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) are engaged in ensuring security of the Olympic facilities under construction in Sochi. The perimeter of the Olympic Park is equipped with video surveillance systems and is controlled by four mobile monitoring teams. The security services are equipped with the most modern means of detecting explosives, with scanners and metal detectors. Cargo vehicles that deliver construction materials to the sites on a mandatory basis pass through X-ray units and gas analysers.
The package of measures aimed at ensuring security of structures, facilities and people who will attend the Olympic Games has been built here, said Ozerov. He drew attention to the fact that the builders have practically no questions to the legislators who adopt security regulations. In his view, problems can arise at the time of transfer of the facilities from Olympstroi and security structures to those who will operate the sports facilities during the Games and after the Olympics, so it is necessary to preserve the existing solutions. “It’s important to prevent the loss of the reins and the people who thoroughly know the facilities during their transfer,” Ozerov stressed.
Last week, Director of Russia’s Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov suggested his counterparts from special services of other countries organising a joint expert working group to exchange information on possible terror threats during preparations to and in the course of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014. He voiced the suggestion on July 6 at the opening session of the 10th meeting of heads of special services, security and law enforcement authorities of the FSB’s foreign partners, which featured 93 delegations of counter-terror authorities from 63 countries.
“I believe that this working group should focus on a mechanism of exchanging information on terror threats revealed during preparations to and in the course of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games,” he said.
From 2004, participants in the meeting have been working out a system of cooperation between special services to provide security of major international events, he said. The system was used for the first time in 2004 during the 28th Summer Olympic Games in Athens.
“We believe we have good chances to organise deeper cooperation,” he stressed. Bortnikov added that the working group could be of an open format, and should foreign counterparts be interested, it could be involved in providing for security of other major political, economic and sports events due in 2012 – the European football championship in Poland and Ukraine, the G8 summit in the USA, the G20 summit in Brazil and the Summer Olympic Games in London.
The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXII Olympic Winter Games, will be the next Winter Olympics celebrated from 7 to 23 February 2014, in Sochi, Krasnodar Territory (Krai), Russia. The city was elected on 4 July 2007, during the 119th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Guatemala City, Guatemala. This will be the first time that the Russian Federation will host the Winter Olympics; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.
The Games will be organised within two clusters, a coastal cluster in Sochi and a mountain cluster in Krasnaya Polyana.
According to Sochi 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Organising Committee President and CEO Dmitry Chernyshenko, the successful partnership and commercial programmes will allow to use funds generated by Sochi 2014 for the 2009–2010 development period, postponing the need for the state funds guaranteed by the Russian Government. He confirmed that the Organising Committee has successfully generated more than $500 million through the marketing programme in the first five months of 2009. Russia is currently providing nearly 327 billion roubles (some US$ 10.85 billion) for the total development, expansion and hosting of the Games; 192.4 billion roubles are coming from the Federal budget and 7.1 billion roubles – from the Krasnodar Krai budget and from the Sochi budget.