| |
More Atlanta Olympic records released
Posted: Wednesday June 02, 1999 12:28 PM
ATLANTA (AP) -- Atlanta Olympic bidders today revealed more details of the enticements they used to win the 1996 games, including a $25,000 donation to a South African antiapartheid organization and a used bus that went to Lima, Peru. Atlanta's Olympic chief, Billy Payne, said he hopes the report to the U.S. House Commerce Committee will show that the city won the games without resorting to the kinds of cash payments and extravagant gifts that have sparked an International Olympic Committee bribery scandal. "Although we occasionally exceeded the IOC's guidelines, our work was always done with honest intent," Payne said in a statement. "In fact, most of the issues we discuss in our report were conducted with goodwill and humanitarian goals in mind." Payne headed the Georgia Amateur Athletics Foundation, which now holds about 1,400 boxes of records that detail the committee's enticements to IOC members from 1988 to 1990, when Atlanta was awarded the 1996 Summer Games. The foundation agreed to give the House Commerce Committee access to the records, even though the foundation is battling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in court to keep them from being released publicly. Payne and Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor who was a key Olympic organizer, gave their report to congressional investigators Tuesday, then released it to reporters today. Although congressional investigators will be allowed to review all the records on which the report is based, the foundation has made only nine boxes of documents available to the public. The report shows that Payne's foundation gave $25,000 in 1990 to the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee to help the effort to dismantle apartheid. At the time, South Africa was preparing to rejoin the Olympic movement after a 30-year absence. "Many leaders of Atlanta's bid group were passionate about what South Africa meant to the Olympic Games, and our financial support for its efforts was a small means by which we could share our passion," Young said in the statement. Also in 1990, the foundation sent a used Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority bus to Lima to provide free transportation for children in downtown Lima. The foundation worked directly with Peru's IOC delegate, Ivan Dibos, and was later reimbursed $10,310 for the bus by Del Taco. The report also shows that Atlanta's bidders gave IOC members 38 individual gifts that exceeded the $200-per-gift limit, including a bulldog, a golf club, a set of surgical instruments, a carburetor kit and a jewelry box. "I believe that this report and its comprehensive documentation will finally clear the air for us," Young said.
| |||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||
