The McLaren report into allegations bouts were fixed in Rio de Janeiro five years ago - proven beyond any doubt, in a development considered shocking by precisely no-one - includes harrowing testimony from a confidential member of AIBA’s pool of referees and judges (R&Js).

A witness describes how a group of corrupted R&Js essentially broke into their room late at night during the 2015 European Championships in Samkov, Bulgaria to deliver a warning: comply with our bout-manipulation or else.

"So they had keys to my room and they came in and basically drunk told me that if I didn't start doing the job that I was hired to do that things wouldn't work out very well for me," the anonymous official told McLaren's team.

"…in that context I was scared shitless now because I've got people coming into my room, like busting into my room and telling me what I'm doing wrong."

It gets worse. The witness relayed this incident to a member of the AIBA Executive Committee but the organisation, according to the report, did nothing.

Despite this being a clear example of intimidation, and of behaviour some might believe to be criminal, "it appears from the evidence available that this complaint was not taken any further and no investigation nor disciplinary procedures were initiated by AIBA".

The 149-page report, the first part of what promises to be a deep delve into AIBA and amateur boxing from McLaren, lays bare the corruption, manipulation and deceit carried out by those involved in the bout-fixing scheme in operation at Rio 2016, Olympic qualifiers and countless other boxing competitions.

It puts meat on the bones of accusations that have dogged boxing for decades and paints a picture of an organisation run by a cabal of officials and R&Js seeking to defraud the sport for their own personal gain. 

We have seen this movie before.

Among the chief villains in this film, not one AIBA wishes to watch again, are then executive director Karim Bouzidi and former President CK Wu, who were "key actors in organising the field of play to allow the manipulation to flourish". More on those two later.

The testimony of the witness in Bulgaria is one of several examples of corruption outlined in the report, some of which are more blatant than others.

The report highlights the prevailing view at the time - that referees and judges needed to be corrupt, or at least open to it, to rise up the ranks and be given the big gigs, such as officiating at the Olympics.

At the 2015 Asian Championships in Bangkok, one Uzbek judge, Sherzod Akhmedov, gave "multiple" bribes of $5,000 (£3,700/€4,300) to six other R&Js, which he concealed in toothpaste tubes.

This rather brazen act was reported and the money returned, while Akhmedov was also removed from the event. But, unsurprisingly, there was no follow-up. "There does not appear to have been in this case an investigation and final decision taken by the Disciplinary Committee as it should normally have been," the report states.

Another R&J, China’s Dexin Wang, offered Cuban Boxing Federation and AIBA Executive Committee member Alberto Puig De La Barca $20,000 (£14,800/€17,300) to fix a fight at the 2015 World Championships in Doha and allow a Chinese boxer to qualify for Rio 2016.

Puig recorded the correspondence and played it to Bouzidi, who - yep, you guessed it - did nothing further. Two officials interviewed by the McLaren team confirmed China had not faced any action, with one admitting the case had been "kept hushed up for more than a year".

Perhaps the most flagrant example has its own dedicated section in the report. A bribe of up to $250,000 (£186,000/€216,000) was offered to fix the outcome of the lightweight semi-final at Rio 2016 between Otgondalai Dorjnyambuu of Mongolia and Sofiane Oumiha of France, McLaren said.

Rakhymzhan Rysbayev, a five-star judge from Kazakhstan, was allegedly the facilitator, according to a threatening conversation he had with a delegate for the Mongolian boxing team.

The transcript of the conversation is littered with expletives from Rysbayev, who reportedly asked for the sum to be paid in cash to make sure Dorjnyambuu progressed to the final.

"The bribe was ultimately not paid and, as a result, the Mongolian boxer, as threatened by Rysbayev, lost the semi-final bout 3:0 on the judges’ scoring," the report says.

That R&Js, mainly "five-star" judges who played a key role in ensuring certain bouts were manipulated using a covert signalling system, felt compelled to act in such a manner was the result of the culture created and emboldened by the likes of Wu, a former International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, and Bouzidi.

Bouzidi, who was unable to be interviewed by McLaren’s investigator due to illness, seems to be the main perpetrator - just as the excellent Bulgarian journalist Ognian Georgiev had reported several years ago.

The Frenchman chose all the officials for Rio 2016 after becoming so powerful that the competent bodies within AIBA responsible for R&Js were rendered obsolete. They were all suspended after the Games pending AIBA’s own investigation, where the main findings were allegedly botched and buried by the leadership, and banned from any involvement in officiating at Tokyo 2020.

"Corrupted" members of the Draw Commission for the Games - including Mohamed Moustahsane, who served as AIBA Interim President for more than 18 months and denies wrongdoing - would influence the selection process, "so that the 'right' R&Js were in a position to officiate the bout as directed".

This very same Draw Commission, according to the report, was controlled by Bouzidi, who also influenced the corrupt "five-star" R&Js, providing a toxic combination that enabled the bout-manipulation.

Not only that, but they also embarked on a process to "weed out the incorruptible" to ensure only those R&Js that were in on it could officiate bouts they wanted to fix.

Nobody challenged them, such was AIBA’s culture at the time, leaving them free to manipulate and corrupt as they pleased.

"The reality was that the rules didn’t stand a chance when the R&Js, the five stars, the Draw Commissioners and the supervisor each had their part to play in manipulation as part of an orchestra being conducted by Karim Bouzidi," the report states.

Wu, a former member of the IOC’s ruling Executive Board, is also found to have been complicit. The Taiwanese "bears ultimate responsibility for the failures of officiating at Rio and the qualifying events", had "legitimised corruption" during his tenure and "tacitly approved corrupt activity in the behaviours of the officials before the five-star group had been officially created".

Among the allegations levelled at Wu personally are that he asked the then executive director Ho Kim to instruct the R&Js to "ensure that Turkey would have some boxers qualified for the Games" at a European qualifier for London 2012 which the country was staging, so as not to "embarrass" the nation - the implication being that, if there was a close call, it should go the way of the hosts.

"These types of requests happened regularly," the report notes. "There existed an unwritten understanding that on close bouts which included a host country boxer, the referee should score in favour of the host country boxer."

Wu also supposedly conducted "reverse manipulation" when it came to Azerbaijan’s team at London 2012 after a company from the nation had provided AIBA with a loan of $10 million (£7.4 million/€8.6 million).

Following a story by the BBC that Azerbaijan had been offered at least two gold medals in return for their cash injection into the Federation, Wu "made an executive order to ensure Azerbaijan did not win any medals" at the Games as he thought it would prove the British broadcaster had been correct if the Azeris won.

Kazakhstan also apparently wanted a slice of the money-for-favours pie and loaned AIBA the same sum. "What followed was that the R&Js felt pressure to call bouts for either the Azeri or Kazakh boxers," McLaren’s team wrote.

This lands solely at the feet of Wu, who also had considerable influence and sway in choosing the members of the Draw Commission - including a couple who were suspended by their National Federation for misconduct.

Some AIBA members questioned their appointments but Wu, who resigned in 2017 amid allegations of financial mismanagement, overruled them, feeding into the narrative that he knew exactly what was going on.

Wu was playing a different game when it came to reporting back to the IOC, offering the organisation his own version of the truth.

"The President in his reports to the IOC over the years avoided discussion of what he apparently knew was inappropriate conduct," the report states.

"The result was a masking of the corrupt activity to present a false impression of actions at the AIBA to the IOC. Problems were not identified and were supressed or pushed aside rather than confronting them and dealing with them more robustly in the first place.

"Evidence demonstrates that AIBA officials were motivated by money and, in the case of CK Wu, personal motivation to maintain the good graces of the IOC."

The fact the likes of Wu and Bouzidi, and later Moustahsane, were able to not only keep their positions but grow their power highlights a common issue for sport.

Instead of rooting out corruption, they facilitated and even oversaw it. Instead of cleaning their sport, they dirtied it to the point where AIBA eventually lost its right to govern boxing at the Olympics.

Moustahsane, named in the IOC report that led to AIBA’s suspension, had led the troubled Federation up until Umar Kremlev’s election in December, even after his role in the Rio 2016 had been questioned. How was that allowed to happen?

In boxing, silence is not only evident but incentivised. Keep quiet and good things will come your way.

"This 'ask not' culture is maintained to this day," McLaren said.

The Canadian lawyer, the go-to for any investigations into misconduct, corruption and wrongdoing in sport, warned the evidence uncovered in the first phase of his boxing probe was the "tip of the iceberg".

The world of boxing, and the Olympic Movement, awaits the next report with bated breath.