Facing Facts in Bribery Scandal

The Olympic bribery investigation, barreling ahead in a wind-aided rush to judgment, took a deep breath Friday to sit back and observe:

One small step forward for Salt Lake City, one giant leap backward for Marc Hodler.

While officials in Salt Lake City were commissioning an independent inquiry into alleged vote-buying during the city’s campaign to host the 2002 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee’s chief investigator said that Hodler, the IOC member who first fired the allegations heard ‘round the world, admitted to him that he had no evidence--only “hearsay”--to support his charges of widespread corruption in the Olympic bid process.

IOC vice president Richard Pound said Hodler, who last week accused the bid committees of Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney and Salt Lake City of trading favors and/or money for IOC votes, told him Friday that he could offer no proof of such transgressions, that he had only “second-hand knowledge.”

“He was asked to tell the board what he knew,” Pound said, “and he said, ‘I have no facts. It’s all hearsay.’ ”

Indeed, one week after Hodler assaulted the modern Olympic movement with his runaway serial finger-pointing, the only hard evidence on the table remains the Salt Lake Organizing Committee’s $500,000 “humanitarian aid” fund for scholarships and free medical care for IOC members and their families.

The fund, which included $393,871 in college scholarships for the relatives of six IOC members and was augmented by $28,000 in medical treatment for three African IOC members, remained the lightning rod of the investigation. Friday, the SLOC executive committee held a 5 1/2-hour emergency meeting, where it approved an “independent investigation” of the situation by its five-person ethics committee.

Hodler was not available Friday.

“There were no bombshells,” said John Ruger of the U.S. Olympic Committee, who attended the meeting. “This just sets up a process to investigate the matter. Any time you have a situation where potential conflict of interest is involved, there has to be a third party appointed to investigate.”

SLOC chairman Robert Garff said the ethics committee will have until Feb. 11 to complete its investigation and make the findings public--a target date nearly two weeks later than the end-of-January deadline set by Pound in the IOC inquiry.

“The process is very involved,” Garff said. “We know for a fact it can’t be done in just a few days. What we owe the public is a complete and thorough report.”

Although several local politicians have called for the resignations of SLOC President Frank Joklik and senior vice president Dave Johnson, Garff said no such actions were discussed in the closed-door meeting.

“No suggestion [to resign] was made,” Joklik said. “The matter has not come up.”

With IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch having already assured Salt Lake City that it will not lose the 2002 Games, a different sort of sanction against Salt Lake comes from Christer Persson, the former head of the Ostersund, Sweden, 2002 bid committee.

Persson proposes fining the SLOC $14 million for “cheating” Ostersund, Quebec City and Sion, Switzerland, out of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Comparing Salt Lake City’s scholarships to the steroids that fueled Ben Johnson’s 100-meter world record at the 1988 Summer Games, Persson told the Associated Press, “When Ben Johnson fooled the others in Seoul, he lost his gold medal. This time, when we were cheated by a competitor, they [Salt Lake City] will keep the gold medal due to practical reasons.

“I think it would be appropriate that they compensate their competitors for the loss of money which we spent in vain.”

Persson estimated that Ostersund spent $2 million on its Olympic campaign, Quebec City $8 million and Sion $4 million.

Salt Lake City defeated those three cities for the right to host the Games by an overwhelming vote of IOC members in 1995. Salt Lake City won the ballot with 54 votes to 14 apiece for Ostersund and Sion and seven for Quebec City.

Salt Lake City, in Persson’s opinion, was “the best bid city for the Winter Games in Olympic history,” suggesting that the city would have won easily on its own merit.

But, he added, “the scholarship fund could have affected the vote.”

“I was naive like most Swedes. I consider people honest until the opposite has been proved.”

Meanwhile, the Toronto Sun identified one of the so-called influence-peddling “agents” that Hodler last week accused of corrupting the Olympic bid process. According to the Sun, an Egyptian consultant named Mahmoud El-Farnawani was paid $58,000 by the SLOC to “deliver” the Arab vote for Salt Lake City.

So, Salt Lake City finds itself bracing for a long, hard winter.

“These sort of inquiries should not have happened,” said a beleaguered Garff. “From our standpoint, we wish they hadn’t happened. But now we have to move forward and onward and we have to go about our business.

“We know that the IOC has given us a vote of confidence. So we’re going to have our staff continue their work and prepare for the 2002 Games.”