Olympics Bribe Charges Denied

No bomb exploded on the Stockholm 2004 Olympic bid committee Tuesday, only a published report that the organization had been accused of attempting to bribe IOC voters.

Quoting an unnamed “senior IOC member,” Reuters reported that both Stockholm and Cape Town, South Africa, had been sent letters of warning by the IOC about possible gift-giving violations during the bid process.

Cape Town’s alleged transgression was offering free plane tickets to Switzerland for wives of IOC members, a charge one Cape Town official characterized as “absolute rubbish.”

Stockholm, meanwhile, was confronted with allegations of trying to win IOC votes by offering members free furniture.

Yes, IKEA furniture.

Finn Persson, spokesman for Stockholm 2004, confirmed the committee had received a letter from the IOC but said, “I think there has been a misinterpretation of what really happened.

“We have had between 82 and 85 visits from IOC members, and some of them were invited to visit the furniture store IKEA. Either someone from IKEA or Stockholm wrote them a letter saying, ‘If you come to Stockholm and visit IKEA and buy some furniture, we can facilitate shipping back to your country.’ ”

Persson said any such offer was made independent of the Stockholm bid committee.

“This is not our intention, to provide free furniture or free transportation,” he said. “I don’t see a big deal in this. Nothing has happened. [The allegation] is so far from Swedish thinking that to even try to do something like this is stupid.”

Cape Town, likewise, denied any wrongdoing.

“This talk of free air fares, the bid company itself has no knowledge of it,” Ameen Akhalwaya, media director for the Cape Town 2004 committee, said. “We haven’t offered any bribes or plane tickets.”

As a newcomer to the Olympic bidding process, Cape Town had been warned, according to Akhalwaya, that “there would be this type of disinformation campaign right before the vote. It happens every time--a dirty whispering campaign or something.”

One rumor making the rounds at the Palais de Beaulieu, where the 106th IOC Session opened Tuesday, was that Cape Town organizers supposedly were offering certain IOC members $20,000 for their votes.

“Scandalous lies,” is how Akhalwaya characterized the rumors. “Who did we bribe? If you’re going to bribe anybody, who do you decide to bribe if it’s a secret ballot? It would be a complete waste of time and money.”

The Cape Town committee, Akhalwaya said, is operating “on a very tight budget. There’s no room for bribes.

But, he added sardonically, “if they could tell us the number of votes and how much money it would take, we would be interested to know.”

Cape Town and Stockholm are two of the five finalists still in contention to host the 2004 Summer Olympics--Athens, Buenos Aires and Rome being the others. The IOC will award the Games to one of these cities after a secret-ballot vote here Friday.