Suspended IOC members won't resign
Posted: Wednesday January 27, 1999 09:17 AM
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Keita is said to have accepted money to support his son at The University of Utah AP |
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) -- Lamine Keita of Mali, one of six
members excluded from the International Olympic Committee, said in
an interview published Wednesday he will defend himself and doesn't
intend to resign.
"I'm a fighter by nature, not someone who resigns," Keita was
quoted as saying in the Lausanne daily Le Matin. "I'm going to
defend myself. The statutes give us the right."
If a special session of the IOC in March confirms his exclusion,
"I will go on the offensive," Keita said.
Keita, 65, president of the Malian National Olympic Committee,
joined the IOC in 1977.
The IOC commission investigating alleged misconduct in
connection with Salt Lake City's successful bid to host the 2002
Winter Olympics found that Keita "knowingly permitted" Sat Lake
organizers to make payments totaling more than $97,000 from
1993-97 to support his son at University of Utah.
"The Salt Lake Organizing Committee had a special fund to
assist the national Olympic committees of the poorest countries,"
Keita told Le Matin.
"Dave Johnson, the vice president of the Salt Lake committee,
told me my son was qualified to benefit from this fund in the firm
of a grant," he continued.
"The only condition was that he leave the United States at the
end of his studies to become involved voluntarily with the Malian
Olympic committee for a year. What father would have refused
that?"
A letter signed by Johnson was later sent to the Malian
committee confirming the study aid, Keita claimed. He added that he
had taken that letter to his hearing Saturday with the IOC
commission, which he left "liberated and confident."
His exclusion was "disproportionate in relation to the error
committed, if indeed there was an error."
The IOC executive board proposed Sunday a radical change in the
selection process for the 2006 Winter Games, under which visits to
bid cities by IOC members will be banned.
Keita defended the visits, saying that "only they allow one to
form an independent opinion."
"I have never witnessed a dubious transaction" on such visits,
he said, adding that he had only sought "information" during his
visit to Salt Lake City.
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