‘I rejected one prostitute, they sent me two’-Referee lifts lid on corruption in boxing 

Boxing referee Bill Phillips was in Astana to referee an international boxing tournament but he says he soon became embroiled in a few battles of his own, fighting off prostitutes and officials offering bribes.

There was even a rather spicy encounter in a sauna.

While it had taken him 18 hours to travel to a competition that would determine if certain boxers qualified for the Olympics in Beijing later that year, it was only a matter of minutes after checking into his hotel room that the “shenanigans” began; in this case a most unexpected welcome.

“I was still unpacking when I heard a knock at the door,” he says. “So I open it and a young girl, absolutely stunning, is standing there. ‘Mr Phillips (she knew my name), I’ve come to keep you company.’ I said: ‘No, I’m okay thank you.’ So she went.

“Then about an hour or two later, two came to the door. I started laughing. I said I can’t handle one, let alone two.”

The hookers, he claims in an interview with The Times, were sent to his room as a bribe to manipulate bouts. “It did not end there,” he says.

“The next morning, I’m approached by an official. ‘Mr Phillips, is everything okay?’ I said yes. He said: ‘You don’t like women?’ I told him I love women but I’m happily married. I’ve been married for 48 years. I have two sons and eight grandchildren. But that wasn’t the only reason for saying no. It’s a bribe, isn’t it? You’re in their pocket. I don’t need all that crap. I’ve been lucky to have good jobs. I also like to be able to sleep at night.”

Last year a report by Richard McLaren, the Canadian lawyer who led the investigation into Russian state-sponsored doping, detailed how payments were offered to boxing officials to manipulate bouts at the Olympics.

Much of it, however, was anonymised and Phillips was not among those interviewed, perhaps because the focus of the McLaren report was the 2016 Olympics in Rio and Phillips, now 73, had stepped away from the international scene after the Beijing Games eight years earlier, sickened by the corruption and so disillusioned he now struggles to watch boxing at the Olympics.

When he read the claims of a former boxing executive as part of a The Times investigation into corruption at the Games last week, Phillips decided to contact this newspaper and tell his own story.

Phillips says he discovered during an international boxing career that included six world championships as well as the Beijing Games — he was the first English referee in 24 years to gain Olympic selection having officiated at 102 international tournaments — bribery was endemic.

In Kazakhstan in 2008 the hookers at the door were only the beginning, he says. In the hotel foyer he was then offered a bribe by a team official.

“I was approached by a coach,” he claims. “I turned it down, but when I got back to my room an envelope had been pushed under my door with $500 in it. I thought ‘What’s this all about?’ I tried to find out who it was. In the end I gave it away to some local people out on the street. They were happy.

“On the same trip, they also said they were having a banquet in a sauna one evening. I thought, ‘Lovely’, so I go. There’s a table laid on with vodka, loads of food — different meats. I’m thinking ‘This is nice.’

“Then they brought these women in and they were all naked. I had some vodka and went back to my room. I’m not going to say what happened with the others after I left, but in the time I was there I kept my towel on.”