In the run up to the Beijing Olympics, Matt McGrath sets out to expose corruption, drug use and cover-ups at the highest levels in sport. BBC World Service Investigation

As the Olympic Torch forces its way around the globe, with a combined army of hundreds of thousands of police and security personnel to ensure that the "message" gets delivered at all costs, the sponsors of this marketing jamboree from hell are trying to put a brave face on it as the torch becomes an emblem of hypocrisy and oppression.

A Moscow press conference of ecologists, human rights activists and Sochi residents has suggested that the International Olympic Committee(IOC) has grounds to cancel the winter Olympic Games, set to take place in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014. The press-conference, titled “The 2014 Sochi Olympics. Opportunism, incompetence, disregard for the law – the major threat to the collapse of the National Project,” met in Moscow on April 10th.

From 1989 to 2001, the world's biggest marketing company ISL/ISSM paid personal commissions 'or bribes' worth an unbelievable 138 million Swiss Francs (87,5 million euros) to sports officials and other persons involved in the dealing of sports TV and marketing rights.

Sportsmen and women may not be renowned for being politically outspoken. The most notorious example of pressure being applied to British sportsmen was in 1938 when the English football team was ordered by the FA and the Foreign Office to give the Nazi salute before a friendly match in Germany.

Extract from the transcript of : File on 4: The building boom's true cost: Broadcast on BBC Radio 4; Tuesday 10 July, 2007.

With Britain in the middle of a construction boom, Julian O'Halloran investigates claims of cartels and price rigging and assesses how much such practices are adding to the final bills paid by UK plc.

A drive to cut Olympic construction costs is threatening to suck in large numbers of “bogus self-employed” migrant workers, leading to widespread tax avoidance and blocked work opportunities for local people, ministers have been warned.