Memo Hints of Olympic Bribes

The Salt Lake Organizing Committee on Friday released a lengthy and yet cryptic memo written in the early 1990s, a document that apparently targets members of the International Olympic Committee believed to be susceptible to bribery or other temptations.

The so-called “geld memo,” which may have served as an outline for Salt Lake’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games, sketches out in brief, sometimes blunt and sometimes catty detail the personalities and the family issues of various IOC members.

The memo does not feature a smoking gun; it does not use the word “bribe” or set forth an action plan. It does, however, provide an intimate look into the workings of a bid team that showered IOC members with more than $1 million in cash and other gifts and sparked the worst corruption scandal in IOC history.

Eight times in the memo the word “geld”--German for money--appears next to an IOC member’s name. Five of those instances represent names subsequently implicated in the scandal, including this reference that all but announces ways to woo Congo’s Jean-Claude Ganga: “Geld, campaign Tee-shirts & balls.”

Without including the word “geld,” references elsewhere in the memo to others in the IOC--who have since been implicated in the scandal--suggest other ways to curry favor.

Next to Ecuador’s Agustin Arroyo, for instance, the memo says: “Daughter would like to come and work, needs a job being receptionist.” In fact, Arroyo’s grown daughter did move to Salt Lake City, albeit briefly, in 1992; she has said she moved there at the behest of bid leader Tom Welch, and alleges he helped pay for her move and helped her find a job.

Arroyo and Ganga were among 10 IOC members who were expelled or who resigned last year in the wake of the scandal. The IOC also adopted a 50-point reform plan and set up a quasi-independent Ethics Commission.

The 28-page “geld” memo surfaced last month. Current SLOC President Mitt Romney said he wanted to release it but was hesitant to do so, citing an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department.

Thursday, SLOC made public a letter from the Justice Department that said prosecutors do not intend to indict SLOC for its corporate role in the scandal.

Friday, Romney said in a statement, SLOC’s lawyers gave their OK to make the “geld” memo public.

IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, in Brazil for meetings this week with the IOC’s ruling Executive Board, received a copy from SLOC early Friday evening. He said nothing while reading it. When he finished, he ordered that it be referred to the Ethics Commission.

“Facing difficulties will show that the IOC’s reforms are now effective and that as an organization we are able to deal with this kind of information,” IOC spokesman Franklin Servan-Schreiber said.

The Justice Department letter to SLOC pointedly noted that the decision not to prosecute the committee did not let any individuals off the hook. Welch and his chief aide, Dave Johnson, are widely believed to be the primary focus of prosecutors’ interest.

The investigation has already yielded three cases. Among those indicted: John Kim, son of influential South Korean IOC member Kim Un Yong, who was reprimanded--but not expelled--for his role in the scandal.

IOC Vice-President Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles--the space in the memo next to her name is blank--said Friday upon being told of it, “I believe we’re moving toward closure, and soon. I believe [more] indictments will be forthcoming, very soon.”

The memo also sparked a response from powerful Mexican IOC member Mario Vazquez Rana that speaks to the difficulty many within the IOC have had in coming to terms with the Salt Lake scandal. Vazquez Rana noted that a bribe takes both a giver and a taker and said the “problems” the IOC has undergone since the scandal exploded in November 1998, “began in Salt Lake.”

It remains unclear who wrote the “geld” memo and, indeed, precisely when it was written. It is, however, obvious from various references that it was written near the beginning of the campaign for the 2002 Games--which began immediately after Salt Lake lost out in 1991 for the 1998 Games.

Certain items in the 28 pages were blacked out. And much of the memo contains the bland sort of biographical stuff that now resides on the IOC’s very public Web site.

The first five pages contain a listing, more or less alphabetical, of the IOC’s members in the early 1990s. It is here that the word “geld” can be found, as in this offering for Kenya’s Charles Mukora, since expelled: “Geld, half and half.”

Or, an in this reference to Uganda’s Francis Nyangweso: “Son, 17, needs a future, equipment, geld.”

Nyangweso was not personally implicated. However, Australian bidders offered $35,000 to both the Kenyan and Ugandan Olympic committees on the eve of the 1993 IOC vote that delivered the 2000 Summer Games to Sydney. Sydney won by two votes.

The rest of the memo contains a more-detailed briefing of 14 members--and the word “geld” only one more time, in Ganga’s entry.

Other entries have business insights. Of Turkey’s Sinan Erdem, for instance, the memo notes that he exported potash to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War and “grows mushrooms for western hotels in Turkey.”

Some offer quirky, even snide, details. Cameroon’s Rene Essomba “loves bow ties,” it says, adding, “His record for attendance at a Winter Olympics”--which runs for more than two weeks--”is six days.” Essomba died in 1998.

Finally, some references offer the most pragmatic of political details.

The memo calls Switzerland’s Marc Hodler, a longtime IOC member and the dean of winter sports, “perhaps the single most influential IOC member other than [Samaranch].” It says Samaranch calls Hodler “one of my most trusted advisors.”

It also says that the brother-in-law of Japan’s Chiharu Igaya is a publisher and “a business partner of Goran Takatch,” who for years was a behind-the-scenes figure in IOC affairs.

Kim’s entry runs more than three pages. The memo sketches out Kim’s lengthy career and notes a quote from Kim saying he will “spare no effort” to help Samaranch in “further developing [the] Olympic Movement.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Going for the Geld

The Salt Lake Organizing Committee released a memo written in the early 1990s that was an apparent blueprint for influencing International Olympic Committee members. It details personalities and family needs of certain IOC members. “Geld” is the German word for money.