Small fry
IOC denies letting big fish off the hook
Posted: Sunday March 14, 1999 07:33 PM
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Led by vice president Dick Pound, the IOC's investigation has led to charges of internal corruption. AP |
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) -- A senior IOC official defended an
internal corruption investigation Sunday against charges that it
focused on minor members and let big names off lightly.
Kevan Gosper, an executive board member from Australia, said the
recommendation to expel a member from Samoa while handing warnings
to two others much higher in the committee's hierarchy was based on
facts, not favoritism.
"I totally reject that," Gosper said as the International
Olympic Committee prepared for a watershed assembly to deal with
its worst corruption scandal. "That is a notion that questions the
integrity f the people on that commission."
The IOC's investigation, led by vice president Dick Pound of
Canada, led to the ouster Friday of Seiuli Paul Wallwork. He was
kicked out because his wife received a $30,000 loan from Tom
Welch, the former head of Salt Lake's Olympic efforts. The loan was
repaid.
The highest-ranking member implicated in the scandal, executive
board member Kim Un-yong of South Korea, and a key player in Sydney
getting the 2000 Summer Games, Phil Coles, were given warnings for
serious breaches of conflict-of-interest rules and questionable
judgment. Coles' case added up to d$60,000 in travel benefits.
Pound said when the report was released that it was "not a
whitewash at all." But Wallwork thought differently.
"Of course, he comes from a major country with a city
organizing the Olympic Games for next year. How can you possibly
remove a person like that?" Wallwork, speaking in New Zealand,
said of Coles. "To clear some people and penalize others, I find
that inexplicable in my view."
Kim said his case was politically motivated and that he might
have been let off to help save both himself and IOC president Juan
Antonio Samaranch.
"Mr. Samaranch and I remain close allies. We have a consensus
that if I go down, he will go down. If he goes down. I will go
down, too. We are in the same boat," Kim said in Seoul before
leaving for Lausanne on Saturday.
But in Lausanne on Sunday, Kim said he might have been a target
of the inquiry because of his high rank.
Asked whether his escape from expulsion suggested preferential
treatment, he said: "Maybe it was the other way around."
Kim also said he never took any money or benefits for himself.
"All I did was work so hard for the Olympic movement. ... I am
not a criminal, I am not found guilty," he said.
Another member who received a warning, former vice president
Vitaly Smirnov of Russia, said he also had no plans to fight the
censure "because the IOC has bigger matters to deal with."
But Smirnov contradicted Kim's defense of one allegation against
the South Korean, saying he was not involved in any way with
getting a scholarship for Ekaterina Souhkorado at the University of
Utah.
"I have nothing to do with her," Smirnov said.
Kim told the Pound commission he was acting at Smirnov's request
when he sought the scholarship for Souhkorado, the daughter of an
official of a Russian music company that signed the first major
recording contact with Kim Hae-jung, Kim Un-yong's concert-pianist
daughter.
Gosper also said the assembly Wednesday and Thursday would mark
the start of a "sensible process to rescue our reputation and to
maintain our responsibility for putting on the most important
sports event in the world."
It will take important actions, he said, such as an
unprecedented vote to uphold the expulsions of six IOC members
caught in the Salt Lake City bribery scandal, the establishment of
an ethics review committee and a radical change in choosing the
2006 Winter Games site.
But Gosper, who has taken a leading role in pleading the IOC's
case to the public since the million-dollar scandal broke in
December, said more long-range reforms probably would only be
discussed.
"We will set a timetable" he said.
Gosper said carrying out significant changes such as democratic
elections and term limits for members and opening committee
meetings and financial records o the public almost surely would
have to wait for a new reform commission, with members from outside
the IOC, to be established at this week's session.
The ruling executive board has not come up with a framework for
the commission, Gosper said, but the panel will include "people
outside [the IOC] of significant experience and stature."
The initial work of that commission could come by the end of the
year. Committee sources, speaking on the condition they not be
identified, said a second special assembly to consider
anti-corruption measures would be scheduled for Lausanne in
December.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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