Throwing Money Down The Drain?

The Olympics is a huge sporting event and is watched by billions of people around the world. Sochi, Russia is taking the worldwide stage this year for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Itar-Rass/Barcroft Media

Sochi has not kick started the games off on a very positive note due to the money that has seemingly disappeared. With 120 days left to the opening ceremonies, an estimated $30 billion has gone missing in a result of "kickbacks and embezzlements". Sochi began their Olympics journey with a budget of about $12 billion but now it's looking more like $51 billion to host these games.

Sochi is now the costliest Olympic Games. Below there are the costs of previous games...

Beijing 2008: $43 billion

Vancouver 2010: $8.9 billion

London 2012: $13.9 billion

Sochi 2014: $51 billion 

While Sochi is dealing with the money situation, they are also dealing with human rights concerns and global controversy regarding Russia's new laws that forbid gay propaganda. 

As Russia takes on two of the world's largest international events within the next 5 years, Putin hopes that it will showcase their power and boost the worldly opinion of Russia. So far, that doesn't seem like the case... yet.