International Boxing Association

The International Boxing Association spent a century as the sport’s global authority and lost it all in five years. The IOC suspended the IBA’s recognition in 2019, and in June 2023 an extraordinary IOC session voted 69-to-1 to strip it of that status (RNZ/Reuters). What undid it was a familiar mixture: dubious governance, Russian state money, and a president who moved the organization to Moscow’s orbit (Firstpost). Then, in September 2026, came the newest and strangest entry in the IBA’s file: the organization’s president, Umar Kremlev, secretly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Donald Trump Jr.’s three-day wedding celebration in the Bahamas (CNN). No sports-governance profile in this reference yet ties the IBA to that 2026 episode — which is where this profile starts.

The 2026 wedding-funding investigation

On September 14, 2026, ProPublica reported that Kremlev had secretly financed a three-day wedding celebration for Trump Jr. in the Bahamas, paying for a private island rental at roughly $100,000 a night and about $70,000 in fireworks (CNN). The money was routed through IB Challenger, a Dubai-based entity affiliated with the IBA, according to the investigation as described by CNN (CNN).

The story did not stay a celebrity scandal. On September 22, 2026, Senator John Curtis asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the wedding funding, including a request to subpoena Trump Jr. (CNN). President Donald Trump said his son had repaid Kremlev, and the couple confirmed Kremlev’s role in the celebration (CNN).

From Olympic authority to pariah

The IBA’s fall from Olympic grace was years in the making. The IOC suspended its recognition of the body in 2019 amid long-running governance concerns (RNZ/Reuters). The following year, Umar Kremlev — a Russian businessman — took over as president and moved the organization’s operations to Russia (Firstpost). Notably, the IBA’s own June 2025 board document — signed by Secretary General and CEO Chris Roberts — still carries the organization’s official address at Avenue du Rhodanie 54, Lausanne, Switzerland (IBA), so the organization’s paper domicile and its operational center under Kremlev sit in two different places. One of his first acts, in April 2021, was a sponsorship deal with Gazprom, the Russian state gas company, which he introduced as the IBA’s biggest-ever sponsor (InsiderSport).

That deal collapsed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the IBA ended the Gazprom sponsorship, “leaving the agreement to run its course” rather than renewing it, with the partnership formally concluding in December 2022 (InsiderSport; RNZ/Reuters).

The split and the expulsion

The trouble ran deeper than one sponsor. Kremlev’s predecessor, Gafur Rakhimov, carried an organized-crime designation, and the federation’s elections were marred by a challenger’s candidacy being blocked (Firstpost). National federations began walking out: about 36 of them left to form the rival governing body World Boxing (Firstpost). In 2025, the IBA announced a $3.1 million Olympic prize-money plan — a bid to reassert relevance in a sport that had already moved on (Firstpost).

The final break came in June 2023, when the IOC’s extraordinary session voted 69-to-1 to strip the IBA of its recognition, formally removing it as Olympic boxing’s governing body (RNZ/Reuters).

Why the IBA still matters

The IBA is no longer the sport’s Olympic authority, but it remains a working organization with a Russian-based leadership, a recent history of state-linked financing, and — as the 2026 wedding episode shows — a president whose personal spending can pull U.S. senators into demanding answers (CNN). Understanding the IBA today means understanding less about boxing rules and more about how a sports federation became a channel for money, influence, and controversy.

What this profile does not claim

• It does not claim the IBA currently governs Olympic boxing — the IOC stripped its recognition in 2023.
• It does not describe ProPublica’s investigation firsthand — the findings here are those reported by ProPublica on September 14, 2026, as described in CNN’s September 22, 2026 reporting (read in full via the LA Post reprint).
• It does not claim Kremlev’s wedding payments were illegal — the verified facts are the payments themselves, the IBA-affiliated conduit, and the Senate Judiciary scrutiny; nothing here assigns criminal liability.
• It does not state exact dates for the wedding celebration itself — sources describe a three-day Bahamas celebration; September 14, 2026 is the date of the ProPublica investigation and September 22, 2026 the date of the CNN report.
• It does not claim the IBA’s operations are still run from Switzerland — the IBA’s own 2025 documents carry a Lausanne address, but reporting shows Kremlev moved the organization’s operations to Russia; both facts are stated as the sources give them.