Crumbling of an Ideal

The International Olympic Committee’s chief investigator apologized Thursday for the corruption scandal sweeping the Olympic movement even as he disclosed that some IOC members got cash and benefits “into the six figures” from boosters of Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

In a series of wide-ranging remarks, Dick Pound also announced that the IOC’s internal inquiry will be expanded from its initial focus on Salt Lake City to a review of every bid for the Games from the Summer Olympics of 1996, won by Atlanta, through the soon-to-be-awarded Winter Olympics of 2006.

Pound, an IOC vice president from Canada heading a six-member panel of inquiry, added that sponsors have been concerned about the relentless rush of revelations--and, he said, rightly so. But he insisted that the scandal should not topple IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, saying that the organization needs stability and that Samaranch is in a “particularly strong position to help us through this crisis.”

Pound’s remarks, delivered at a sports trade show in Manhattan and in interviews afterward, were his most extensive on the scandal, which erupted last month with allegations that Salt Lake City boosters gave IOC members or their relatives cash, free medical care, scholarships and other enticements.

The scandal has prompted four investigations--by the IOC, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Salt Lake organizing committee’s ethics panel and the U.S. Department of Justice. Utah Atty. Gen. Jan Graham says she may launch a fifth if it appears state law has been violated.

Though the Justice Department investigation is likely to take months, a grand jury in Salt Lake already has issued subpoenas.

Pound said Thursday that IOC investigators do not believe any crimes were committed in connection with the Salt Lake bid--though he noted that the issue is ultimately for Justice Department investigators to determine.

A report compiled by Pound’s commission is due for presentation Sunday in Lausanne, Switzerland, to the IOC’s executive board. The IOC is expected to recommend the expulsion of some members, although it remains unclear how many.

“The supreme recourse is for us to expel a member, and that’s what we’re prepared to do,” Pound said.

One IOC member implicated in the scandal, Pirjo Haggman of Finland, resigned a few days ago. Her then-husband got a government forestry job with the help of the committee seeking the 1996 Summer Games for Toronto. She has denied wrongdoing.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal, citing a draft copy of the Pound report, said 16 IOC members were under suspicion. Samaranch had previously put the number at 13--nine accused of serious matters, four of lesser infractions.

“You should take the word of the president,” Pound said in comments made after the speech Thursday to a small group of newspaper reporters. He also declared that no draft report exists, only a “compendium of memoranda” that is far from final.

The Journal also reported that IOC members were given cash or benefits up to $780,000. Pound declined Thursday to confirm that number. He said only that it was under $1 million.

He also declined to provide details about who got how much cash. He said that “some of the amounts, but not all, did get into six figures.” The first cash payments were provided in late 1991, perhaps 1992, he said; the last, in 1996.

Pound said that both the IOC members under suspicion and Salt Lake boosters and organizers have been particularly insistent there was no explicit bribery--no quid pro quo.

“Both sides are pretty adamant that was not what it was about,” he said.

Even so, Pound began his speech by expressing the IOC’s “sincere apologies” for the “actions of certain IOC members.” He added that the IOC is “profoundly disappointed about the events revealed in the last few weeks.”

He insisted the IOC investigation will not be a whitewash, describing it as an “unflinching exercise in pursuing the truth.”

He said after the speech, “It would be better for all of us if we deal fully, firmly and finally with this issue.”

That’s why, he added, his commission now intends to broaden its inquiry, to look at bids from the 1996 Summer Games, which were awarded in 1990, through the 2006 Winter Games, due to be awarded this June.

The bidding process has long been rife with unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing, and Pound said, “It doesn’t make sense to think that Salt Lake is the first and only time this has happened.”

Pound said he expects that officials in all bid cities will soon get a letter asking them to come forward with evidence--if any--of “improper conduct” by IOC members.

Among the cities to get such a letter will be Nagano, Japan, site of the 1998 Winter Games. A Nagano official said this week that boxes of documents detailing how the industrial city in the Japan Alps spent $14 million to win the games were burned in 1992 in the city incinerator as a “courtesy” to IOC members.

Replies will be due before the same March 17-18 conference at which the IOC is scheduled to vote on expelling members implicated in connection with events in Salt Lake.

Beyond that, Pound said, it’s possible the IOC will adopt a “special code of ethics” and establish a standing panel--or some sort of “ongoing mechanism”--to deal with future allegations of corruption.

“I say to you, despite our troubles, despite the fact that we to some degree have brought this on ourselves, the Games will survive,” Pound said in his speech. “Not only that--we will seize this opportunity for change and emerge stronger and truer to our ideals than before.”