insidethegames has obtained a strongly-worded letter sent by the IBA to all technical officials, referees and judges warning them not to take up the IOC’s offer to voluntarily participate in its Olympic qualifying competitions and Paris 2024 boxing event.

A "Paris 2024 Boxing Unit" is set to run the Olympic qualifiers and main event at next year’s Games after the IBA was stripped off the rights due to continuing governance concerns.

The letter, signed by IBA’s development director Chris Roberts, was sent out yesterday after the International Federation said it was aware of an email issued by the IOC to officials "whereby you may have been invited to declare your intentions to act as a volunteer for the respective P24 qualification competition and boxing tournament (both 'IOC tournaments')".

It is understood that technical officials, referees and judges have been given until March 21 this year to submit their application to the IOC.

Roberts warned that officials which take part in the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit-run tournaments would be in breach of IBA’s technical and competition (T&C) rules and be subject to possible sanctions.

The letter stipulates that under rule 1.6.2, National Federations, their teams, individual boxers or competition officials are prohibited from participating in an international tournament that is not approved in advance by the IBA.

"Considering that the international tournaments announced by the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit are not approved by IBA as established under the rule 1.61 of the T&C rules, participation in these tournaments is forbidden, unless otherwise approved by the IBA Board of Directors," Roberts wrote.

"In order to grant approval, the IOC, must, and as a matter of courtesy, request assistance and support from IBA to approach any TO [technical official] in the first instance.

"Disappointingly, this has not happened to date.

"Please not that according to article 14 of the IBA Disciplinary and Ethics Code, 'any person who violates or acts contrary to the provisions of the IBA constitution, IBA technical and competition rules, IBA’s regulations, directives, guidelines, circulars and decisions will be subject to the sanctions provided for under section 6 of this Code'."

Roberts stressed that the rules also state that no official is "entitled as of right to participate and to be invited as a competition official to any competition" and added that a "lack of respect of the general principles in terms of loyalty towards IBA" would be taken into account when looking to appoint officials for further events.

The matter is expected to discussed more when the IBA Board of Director are due to meet on March 26 in New Delhi.

The IBA had its IOC recognition withdrawn in June 2019 due to concerns over judging and refereeing, financial stability and governance, leading to the IOC Boxing Task Force handling the sport at Tokyo 2020.

It was then announced by the IOC in June last year that it would take over the running of boxing events at Paris 2024, including qualification competitions because of persistent problems within the worldwide governing body.

Under the IOC’s boxing qualification model, the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, Kraków-Małopolska 2023 European Games, Solomon Islands 2023 Pacific Games and the delayed Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games would be used as qualifiers.

The Accra 2023 African Games were also expected to be a qualification event only to be postponed until 2024, leaving the IOC to work on an alternative with the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa.

Following the continental phase, the IOC plans to stage two world qualification tournaments in 2024 where the remaining quota places will be determined before the Olympics are staged in Paris.

Last month, the IBA criticised the IOC for "numerous delays" on publishing a "clear" system as it released its own qualification criteria that included the Women’s and Men’s World Championships as qualifiers.

The IOC then hit back by reiterating that the IBA will not be involved in organising the Paris 2024 boxing qualifications and tournaments.

The release of the letter from the IBA also comes after claims by Boxing New Zealand that a a tournament is scheduled to be held in The Netherlands later this year as a rival to the Men’s World Championships due to be staged in Uzbekistan in May.

Speaking before the start of the Women’s World Championships in New Delhi, IBA President Umar Kremlev laughed off the plans and called for cooperation from the IOC.

"We should be sure that all the qualification tournaments shall be managed by IBA," said Kremlev.

"Firstly, we need to cooperate with each other.

"We are pretty sure that IOC representatives would like to avoid any conflict with us and I am sure that in the future the cooperation will be on a high level as well."

insidethegames has contacted the IOC for comment.