Justice Department Talks to DeFrantz

In a sign that the U.S. Justice Department is still gathering facts relating to Salt Lake City’s scandal-marred bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics, federal agents interviewed International Olympic Committee Vice President Anita DeFrantz last week at her Los Angeles office.

The interview April 10 lasted three hours and covered a “range of issues,” DeFrantz said Wednesday. She declined to be more specific. Sources said DeFrantz was asked about everything from her considerable influence and long tenure at the IOC--she has been a member since 1986--to her knowledge, if any, about Salt Lake’s corruption-laced winning 2002 bid.

DeFrantz has said often she did not know of irregularities in the Salt Lake bid until they became public knowledge, in late 1998. Ultimately, it was revealed that the bid included more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements for IOC members and their relatives.

Like IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who met for six hours on Jan. 31 with U.S. agents, DeFrantz was interviewed as a witness, not as a target of the long-running federal investigation. “I was fully cooperative,” she said.

A Justice Department spokesman declined comment.

Salt Lake won the 2002 Games in 1995, culminating a multiyear campaign.

Tom Welch, who chaired the bid, and his top aide, Dave Johnson, have since resigned.

The federal government launched its investigation into possible criminal misconduct in December 1998.

In 1999, with the IOC conducting its own inquiry, 10 members resigned or were expelled. In December the IOC adopted a 50-point reform plan.

The interview with DeFrantz is notable not only for its timing--a signal that the government is still searching for facts to fit legal theories that might work in court--but because of her stature within the Olympic movement.

DeFrantz, 47, a bronze medalist in rowing at the 1976 Montreal Games, is the senior IOC member of the three in the United States. In September, she is due to rotate into the key post of first vice president--directly in line under Samaranch, IOC president since 1980.

Samaranch is due to step down next year. DeFrantz is often mentioned as a possible successor.

For the past year, however, DeFrantz has faced inquiries from reporters and others skeptical that someone with her influence and service at the IOC could have been out of the loop when Salt Lake was bidding.

In November, she told The Times she believes “in the essential importance of integrity,” adding, “That’s the way I live my life.”

To date, the Justice Department investigation has produced three criminal cases:

* Last Aug. 3, Utah businessman David Simmons pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor tax charge. He said he helped create a sham job for John Kim, son of powerful South Korean IOC executive board member Kim Un Yong, with the understanding that the Salt Lake bid committee would pay the younger Kim’s salary and then deduct the salary from his taxes.

* On Sept. 1, John Kim was indicted on felony charges that he lied to investigators and entered the United States with a fraudulently obtained green card. Before being indicted, however, he moved to Seoul.

* On March 14, Alfredo LaMont, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s former director of international relations, pleaded guilty to two felony counts--one of tax fraud, the other of conspiring to obstruct the IRS.

LaMont’s case made plain what the Justice Department has primarily been up to for all these months--ferreting out bank records in the United States and abroad in compiling an intensive paper trail against those federal prosecutors suspect of misconduct.

It also left no doubt that prosecutors are still trying to build a case against others. Court documents name no names. The documents do, however, refer to “SLBC Officers 1 and 2.”

DeFrantz’s meeting with the government was arranged after LaMont’s plea. However, DeFrantz’s attorney, Richard Oparil of Washington, cautioned: “I don’t think it would be accurate to write that all or most of the interview covered topics related to LaMont.”