Penza, 10 December 2015. PenzaNews. The elimination rounds of the 5th Russian amateur hockey teams tournament in the Penza region in “Amateur 40+” division has been shut down, and the authority of the regional Nightly Hockey League (NHL) representative Sergei Ilyushin has been revoked, after an audit made it apparent that the six-team tournament was a fake and the matches did not take place in reality.

© PenzaNewsBuy the photo

According to information published earlier, the six teams in the Penza region “Amateur 40+” division – “Avrora,” “Avtodor,” “Atlant,” “Olimpiya,” “RDK” and “Titan” – allegedly held six tours.

The opening match of the division, between “Avrora” and “Titan,” took place on October 17. The NHL representatives have uncovered that it was the only match that took place.

The rest of the games were completely made up by the regional League representative Sergei Inyushin – scores, goals and passes – that were subsequently submitted to the NHL statistics database.

“As they say, it’d be worth a laugh if it wasn’t so sad. It reached such an extent that the fans were coming to see the match to discover there was no match at all. We received reports from hockey players themselves, who allegedly took part in those games and scored goals, saying in reality they were present elsewhere and knew nothing of this. The investigation of the Nightly Hockey League helped document this heinous fake of an elimination round in the Penza region. As we found out from the local authorities, nobody even provided the ice rinks for the matches – except for the opening and the closing matches of this so-called ‘tournament’,” said the NHL executive director Alexander Tretyak.

Sergei Inyushin acted in the interests of himself and “certain people” who already had the victories in the elimination rounds and the trip to the 5th countrywide championship finals in Sochi in May 2016 “signed for them.”

“In the light of the current situation, the Nightly Hockey League has only one course to take: to close down this ‘tournament,’ discard its ‘results’ and revoke the authority of the regional representative Mr. Ilyushin. The Nightly League regrets to state that the activities of its former regional representative have discredited the NHL in the Penza region and stained the local reputation of the amateur hockey movement. Nevertheless, the Nightly Hockey League management has no doubt that the Penza region with its long-time and excellent hockey legacy will have a worthy representation in the countrywide festival further on,” the NHL press service quotes Alexander Tretyak.