Atlanta Olympics ready for IOC inquiry
Posted: Tuesday January 26, 1999 11:56 AM
ATLANTA (AP) -- Atlanta Olympic officials, reiterating that their bid for the 1996 Summer Games was clean, are preparing a response to an IOC inquiry.
The city's Olympic chief, Billy Payne, and several of the original volunteer bid group members plan to respond by Sunday, the deadline set in a draft letter to all Olympic bidders.
Payne said it is not clear whether the International Olympic Committee or the U.S. Olympic Committee would pursue the investigation. He said he has not received an official inquiry, but welcomes an investigation into improper activity on the part of IOC members.
"As we've said for the last five weeks, our successful bid was predicated on the hard work of a small group of individuals who were then and remain now deeply committed to the Olympic movement," Payne told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. "We believe our response will indicate a city can play within the rules and be successful."
After recommending the expulsion of six members this past weekend, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch said the organization would broaden its investigation to examine allegations of misconduct in other bids, stretching from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to 2006.
IOC vice president Dick Pound, chairman of the special commission investigating influence peddling, said in Lausanne, Switzerland, over the weekend that he would ask the USOC for any proof that IOC members received inappropriate gifts, favors or compensation in Atlanta. But USOC spokesman Mike Moran said his organization was not pursuing an investigation.
Moran said he thinks Pound will send a letter directly to Payne seeking information about the IOC's conduct during the bid. "Any information that may come our way will go to the Mitchell Commission," Moran said.
The commission, headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, already is reviewing the Salt Lake City bid scandal.
Dick Yarbrough, spokesman for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said Monday that a copy of Payne's response would go to both.
"It doesn't matter, to the extent that the answers are the answers. We know what the questions are," Yarbrough said. "And they are pretty simple questions to answer in Atlanta."
The IOC is asking the bidders if any IOC members engaged in unethical conduct while in their cities.
"We've already answered those questions," Payne said. "Our formal response will confirm what we have said to date. Our answer will once again affirm that what we did was within the rules that were promulgated and customs that were allowed and the financial support that was permitted."
Meanwhile, former Mayor Andrew Young, Payne's close ACOG associate, said he plans to suggest to Mitchell that Salt Lake's offerings to IOC delegates were "not done in the sense of bribery."
Rather, he said, they were "done in terms of humanitarian relief and [Mitchell] ought to consider that option."
Young said he was shocked over accusations leveled against him by Australian Olympic chief John Coates, who suggested Young dispensed U.S. foreign aid in exchange for support for Atlanta's bid.
"People are not good losers," Young said. "Whenever they lose they think that somebody else has been dishonest."
Young also said embattled IOC delegate Jean-Claude Ganga of the Republic of Congo last week faxed copies of letters to him that apparently serve as part of Ganga's own defense against IOC corruption charges.
Ganga, one of the six suspended IOC delegates, is contesting allegations that he accepted payments and gifts from Salt Lake totaling $216,000.
"[Ganga] sent me letters that he had received from other African countries, which served as receipts for the money that he had given them," said Young, who values Ganga as a friend.
"I think Ganga is a character. He is a hustler in the sense that he hustles for African athletes and he is hustling for African sports."
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