Rich Owners Turn KHL Into an Auction - Team Boss

(UPDATES with quotes and background, CORRECTS Rotenberg's first name, statistic on wealth)
Big-spending owners are turning the KHL into a league dominated by "sick vanity" where the championship goes to the highest bidder, the new president of Gagarin Cup holder Dynamo Moscow said Saturday.
Two state energy companies have embarked on spending sprees in recent seasons, the Gazprom gas company at SKA St. Petersburg and oil firm Rosneft at CSKA Moscow, where Rosneft money has brought in a raft of NHL talent this summer.
“Nowadays it’s turned into some sort of auction, whoever has the more money has the power,” Dynamo president Arkady Rotenberg said.
“That’s not how it should be at all.”
There is a conflict between rich and poor in the KHL, he suggested.
“We come in to help sport, the team and to do something for the country. So that the young ones learn in a team of masters, and that there’s some sort of tradition.”
“But then people come in to indulge their sick vanity. It’s not right. I don’t need that.”
He also said that unnamed people were stealing money from KHL clubs.
"In the whole KHL, there's lots of stuff that, in principle, there shouldn't be. They just steal from us in part," he said.
Rotenberg is on the KHL board of directors, and said the league would take a low-key approach to tackling improper behavior.
"It's not right and we'll quietly, not fight it, we won't fight, but we will try to introduce order."
Rotenberg is one of Russia's richest men, with wealth estimated at $1 billion by Forbes and interests in the gas and banking sectors. He said Saturday that his companies were helping to finance Dynamo.
Rotenberg is reportedly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and sparred with him at judo in his youth.
Dynamo faces its opponents from last season’s Gagarin Cup final series, Siberian team Avangard Omsk, in the Opening Cup on September 4, the first day of the new KHL season.