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| New Olympics Corruption Skeleton Unearthed |
| 2004-08-05 |
Sports: 4 August 2004, Wednesday The suspicions of corruption in the failed candidacy of Sweden for the Olympic Games 2004, have come back to the limelight, as the IOC seems to plunge into another major corruption scandal after the games in Salt Lake City. A publication by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reminds about an attempt to bribe the International Olympic Committee, once it had shown preference for the Athens' candidacy. Won't someone please think of the athletes! [/Mrs. Lovejoy] Based on solid documentary and telephone-bugging evidence the newspaper said that, prior to Greece's win, Swedish candidacy organization committee gave USD 60,000 to a consultant, who then took the plane to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Only to buy watches and chocolate, mind you. For six months the Swedish paid of a total of USD 175,000 to Hungarian agent - Gabor Komyathy - for a presumed payment of favours. According to the daily, Komyathy who had worked for the candidacies of Atlanta and Sydney was committed to distribute money, favours and gifts to other people or directly to IOC members who would give their vote for Stockholm. So, why is this Komyathy character still permitted any contact with the IOC committee members? The Public Prosecutors' Office opened an investigation in 2000 to find out the addressee of the money that Olof Stenhammar, president of the candidacy committee, drew from its own bank account to give to a consultant. New evidence delivered by "Dagens Nyheter" showed that Swedish candidacy contacted with three other intermediary agents, with the Kenyan Charles Mukora, IOC member who resigned over a corruption case, and with high-positioned directors at the Olympic Federation of Asian Countries with similar intentions. A Royal Exchequer official, Christer van der Kwast, told the daily that "the case seems a criminal conspiracy". Does anyone else get the feeling that the IOC and United Crusade both read from the same playbook? What is it that prevents a clean sweep of all fiduciary officers after exposure of such misconduct? Sweden's peccadillo is merely the iceberg's tip in all of this. There are already allegations surfacing about the 2005 selection process for the 2012 games. |
| Posted by:Zenster |
| #6 Aris, to be strictly honest, I couldn't give less of a damn about American sports swaggering. It's not something I take seriously. Security issues are another matter, of course, but the terribly sincere hand-wringing about the betrayal of Olympic ideals - please, give me a break. I think I care more about the suggestion that some ex-Soviet tyrant has bought his way to the presidency of the World Chess Federation. Hell, I'm in favor of letting Turkmanbashi bribe his way into a 2012 Ashgabat if he can pull it off, provided he not screw over his own people in the fund-raising process too much. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2004-08-06 12:09:19 AM |
| #5 Speak for yourself, Katsaris--those Olympics were OK, Eric Rudolph notwithstanding. Whereas Athens has already had several bombs go off as well as other *problems* and the Games haven't even started yet! (The worse Olympics will always be Munich '72 and Berlin '36.) |
| Posted by: GreatestJeneration 2004-08-05 8:39:39 PM |
| #4 Mitch, no offense, but American hands were the ones that helped create in Atlanta one of the worst Olympics in modern history. 1996 Summer Olympics Centennial Olympic Park bombing As yet it's too soon to tell what Greek hands will turn out to have created. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-08-05 8:02:14 PM |
| #3 Didn't the IOC complain about the lack of prostitutes in Utah? I seem to recall some sort of problem they had along those lines. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2004-08-05 5:26:39 PM |
| #2 Incidentally, am I the only one who's regretting that the 2004 Olympics weren't in the efficient and no-nonsense hands of Scandinavian bureaucrats, rather than the highly erratic and palsied hands of modern Greeks? |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2004-08-05 4:40:11 PM |
| #1 You see, this is what you get when you engender a culture of probity and honesty: lousy bribers. The slovenly and the crooked have a natural advantage in the global community when it comes to duking it out for the plum international prizes. If the Swedish didn't already *have* the Nobel Prizes, they'd be pretty much SOL. Swedes of corrupt intentions, you must be proactive. You cannot allow Sweden to fall behind in the vital global bribery industry. Your international reputation cannot survive a kickback gap! |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2004-08-05 4:37:25 PM |