IOC Probe to Include Other Sites

The International Olympic Committee announced Monday that it is expanding its investigation of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal to include other cities that may have offered cash, free travel and other gifts to IOC members to influence their votes in the process of selecting cities to host the Olympic Games.

Director General Francois Carrard said a six-member IOC investigation commission is determined “to look at every piece of evidence” concerning graft, bribery and vote-buying allegations to ascertain whether some IOC members violated their oaths. He said the inquiry is no longer confined to Salt Lake City’s successful bid to host the 2002 Winter Games but that investigators are gathering facts worldwide.

The decision to enlarge the scope of the inquiry followed reports about other cities engaged in frenzied Olympic bidding wars. Organizers of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, treated visiting IOC officials to free first-class airline tickets and lavish entertainment in a bid to secure their bid to host the Games, according to media accounts. And people involved in other cities’ Olympic bids have come forward in recent days with assertions that some IOC members suggested that how they would vote on those bids might hinge on how well they were treated. Olympic rules require that the value of gifts to its officials must not exceed $150 and oblige all 114 IOC members to remain free of any political or commercial influence.

Carrard suggested that what has exploded into the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the Olympic Games could become therapeutic by helping the IOC to nail down abuses that have long been the subject of whispered innuendo and to prod the Olympic movement into carrying out overdue reforms in the methods used to pick host cities.

“For many years, there were rumors. We have never been able to have the beginning of evidence,” Carrard said. “We had allegations; we had hearsay. When we tried to get evidence, we always faced a wall of silence, even by people who said publicly they would disclose certain things.”

Since the scandal surfaced, an independent ethics panel formed by the Organizing Committee has interviewed about two dozen people with knowledge of the 2002 bid. Former bid committee vice president Dave Johnson has told the panel that alleged cash bribes to IOC members were actually travel reimbursements or part of “an effort to maintain friendships” with the members, his attorney said Monday.

IOC officials are now considering restricting trips to potential host cities to a small selection committee, or even banning such travel altogether. Candidates to host the Games could be required to make their cases through a simple textual and visual presentation to the Olympic hierarchy, and the number of cities bidding for the Games is almost certain to be reduced.

IOC Vice President Richard Pound and other members of the commission investigating the Salt Lake City bid are expected to deliver their findings by the weekend. On Saturday, the accused IOC members will be given a chance to explain their behavior in closed-door sessions, and the executive board will announce their fates Sunday night.

According to IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, nine members face serious corruption charges and four others are accused of minor infractions. Olympic sources have confirmed the identities of all 13 members under investigation. The most senior figure is Kim Un Yong, an IOC executive board member and former South Korean intelligence officer who is head of the World Tae Kwon Do Federation.

Other IOC members accused of unethical behavior are Agustin Carlos Arroyo of Ecuador; Bahir Mohammed Attarbulsi of Libya; Zein Abdin Abdel Gadir of Sudan; Jean-Claude Ganga of the Congo Republic; Anton Geesink of the Netherlands; Louis Guirandou-N’Diaye of Ivory Coast; Pirjo Haggman of Finland; Lamine Keita of Mali; Charles Nderitu Mukora of Kenya; Sergio Santander Fantini of Chile; David Sikhulumi Sibandze of Swaziland; and Vitaly Smirnov of Russia.

Smirnov, a former IOC vice president, and Kim, considered a candidate to succeed Samaranch as president, denied any wrongdoing.

Kim said the allegations were an attempt to defame him.

“I did not do anything that I should be ashamed of,” he said in Seoul. “I don’t even feel it necessary to comment on it, because I have absolutely nothing to do with the scandal.”