Ice Dancer Denies Charges

Figure skater Marina Anissina acknowledged she is acquainted with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, the reputed Russian mobster charged with trying to fix the ice dance and pair competitions at the Salt Lake City Olympics, but said Monday she and partner Gwendal Peizerat won the ice dance gold medal without outside help.

“This situation has perturbed me. I am certain it is something that is a complete fabrication,” she said at a news conference in Arles, France, where the couple was to perform in an ice show. “It’s a ridiculous affair. I’ve only seen things like this in American movies.”

Anissina was accompanied by Peizerat--who wore a black T-shirt imprinted with the words “Not Guilty” in red and white lettering--as well as by Didier Gailhaguet, president of the French ice sports federation.

Also present were Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, who won the pairs event but had to share their victory with Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier after the International Skating Union determined French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne had been pressured to vote for the Russians.

Anissina said she met Tokhtakhounov at a 1999 party and they later “spoke on the telephone from time to time.” However, she denied having participated in phone conversations cited in court papers filed last week in New York.

A woman identified merely as “the female ice dancer” but described in terms that could only fit Anissina--and identified as Anissina last week by International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge--is said to have promised to help Tokhtakhounov get a French visa.

The criminal complaint also says Tokhtakhounov spoke to “the female ice dancer” on March 7, after the Games, and she said the FBI was investigating Gailhaguet because “information came in that [Tokhtakhounov was] involved with the results” at Salt Lake City.

The voice of a woman called “the female ice dancer’s mother” is also said to be on the tapes. “I never telephoned him [after the Games],” Anissina said. “I’m sure that that is not my voice. I don’t know who my mother called, but I am sure that she didn’t do that, either.”

Peizerat said he believes she’s innocent. “She had the misfortune to know someone who was mixed up in this business,” he said.

Said Sikharulidze: “Very soon we’ll learn that it was all a big mistake.”

Gailhaguet said he had met Tokhtakhounov in 2000 to discuss the Russian’s plan to finance a professional hockey team in Paris. However, he said he was told by French officials not to grant Tokhtakhounov’s request for help in getting a Franch visa.

Gailhaguet said he did not speak to Tokhtakhounov after that and believes the ice dance standings should not change, even though Rogge said last week the results could be recalculated depending on the outcome of various investigations.

“They won their medal on the ice,” Gailhaguet said of Anissina and Peizerat. “The Russian judge [Alla Shekhovtseva] voted against the French skaters, so where’s the alliance?”

Tokhtakhounov, described in the complaint as “a major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime,” has socialized with tennis and hockey players from Russia and other former Soviet republics. He is in an Italian jail awaiting proceedings to extradite him to the U.S. His attorney, Luca Saldarelli, said last week Tokhtakhounov is innocent.

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Times wire services contributed to this report.