Russian basketball team sued by Colombia for allegedly impersonating its national team

The Colombian Basketball Federation has announced that it will take legal action against an independent basketball team in Russia that allegedly used the name and uniforms of the Colombian national team.

The team is participating in a tournament, the Russian Friendship Cup, which is held in the city of Perm. The tournament brings together Russian amateur teams that unofficially represent different national teams. The Colombian federation claims to have never authorized a team participating in the tournament to use its image.

“The Colombian Basketball Federation has not given its support to any club to participate in the Russian Friendship Cup,” the organization said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the president of the Russian basketball federation, former NBA player Andrei Kirilenko, claims that the team coordinated with the Colombian government on private channels and did nothing inappropriate.

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“We would like to emphasize that all our interactions with the Colombian team took place exclusively through official communication channels,” Kirilenko told Match TV. “Our position remains unchanged: all communication and coordination is carried out only through verified and official sources.”

The team that is masquerading as Colombia has been one of the worst performers in the tournament so far, losing 155-53 to a local team before losing 108-57 to Venezuela. The team’s next game was scheduled for Friday against Russia, but the match was canceled.

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Kirilenko claims the cancellation is because the team has performed so poorly that the schedule needs to be revised to account for the disparity with other teams.

“After the first match, we understand that the current level of the Colombian team is below what was expected, which causes some disappointment for all of us,” Kirilenko said. “In this regard, we have already revised the schedule and format of the tournament to ensure a more balanced and competitive competition.”

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The incident is just the latest in a series of recent sanctions against Russian athletes and sports institutions.

Russia was barred from participating in the recent Paris Olympics because of that country’s invasion of Ukraine, which came just four days after the end of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The invasion violated the Olympic Truce, a resolution calling on all nations to lay down arms and not engage in conflict, which begins one week before the start of the Olympics and ends one week after their conclusion.

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva Valieva had her Beijing gold medal stripped after it was revealed she had tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned drug that prevents angina, at the Russian national championships in December 2021. Valieva was found guilty of committing an anti-doping rule violation in January, her team was disqualified and the gold was subsequently awarded to the United States in Paris more than two years after the original event.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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