THE GREAT FIRE FOR LONDON? The government may be about to back a bid

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Feb 2, 2003

THE ARGUMENT is won. Iraq may be higher up the political agenda, forcing a delay in the official announcement of the decision, but the Government is about to give its blessing to a London bid for the Olympics.

The British Olympic Association and its chairman, Craig Reedie, will lead the applause when that news is confirmed later this month, while Ken Livingston will pledge that London will deliver a wonderful Games in 2012. Andrew Jennings, however, will tell you Britain must now face up to dealing with a nasty and corrupt regime.

And he is not talking about Saddam Hussein.

The award-winning investigative journalist believes it is impossible for the bidding process to be untarnished, despite the International Olympic Committee's much-vaunted claims that it cleaned up its act following the Salt Lake City scandal.

"I'm fed up with Craig Reedie saying the reforms are working well. The reason they are saying that is they haven't done an audit of it. The most corrupt people in the IOC were protected in the purge post Salt Lake, there is no question about that.

"What can you think of an organisation that, as a result of the Salt Lake City scandal, tells Vitaly Smirnov he has got a serious warning for his behaviour and then elects him unopposed as one of its vice-presidents?

"Let's remember, nearly all the information coming into the public domain in this debate is provided by people who will benefit from it."

The IOC and Jennings have history. The pugnacious writer is their nemesis. His books have exposed bribery, nepotism, vote-rigging and links with organised crime. The IOC rubbished his claims, sued him, and even got a local judge in their home city of Lausanne to impose a five-day jail sentence.

Then one of their own members blew the whistle. Marc Hodler's accusations on the corruption surrounding the bidding process for the last Winter Olympics threatened to tear the organisation apart. IOC members were shown to have sold their votes for sex, cash and medical treatment as rival cities vied for the biggest prize in world sport.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the then long-reigning president of this enormously powerful, yet unaccountable, body, promised reforms. Fifty were introduced, including a ban on IOC members visiting bidding cities. Instead, they would make their decisions based on reports from a technical committee. The junketing, and by implication opportunities for bribery, would end.

Jennings scoffs. "So there is no such thing as the wire transfer of money then?"

Others are less cynical. Barrie Houlihan, Professor of Sports Policy at Loughborough University, believes we should all be positive critics of the IOC, an organisation whose 126 unelected members have the power to transform a city or country's economy with a ballot paper.

"I think it is a lot cleaner than it used to be, partly because of the reforms. Equally significant is the change of leadership from Samaranch to Jacques Rogge. He is much more open and businesslike and he doesn't have the pretensions to imperial purple that Samaranch had," suggested the leading academic.

"While no decision process is free from political pressure, the IOC is probably as well able to resist it as any equivalent business or corporation. I'm reasonably confident the decision on 2012 will be made in a fairly honest and open way.

"But we do need to look at the IOC in much the same way we evaluate the worth of the United Nations. They are both idealistic organisations which operate in a murky political world of necessity," he added.

Jennings is less understanding, and when you examine some of the skulduggery that has gone on, it is not hard to find yourself in his corner. Bid officials in Salt Lake admitted to spending (pounds) 6.1 million to persuade IOC members to vote for their city, with one of the main individual beneficiaries being Jean-Claude Ganga of the Congo.

He became known as the "human vacuum cleaner" during repeat visits to Utah which were "rewarded" with treatment for hepatitis for him, a knee replacement operation for his mother-in-law and cosmetic surgery for his wife. Jobs and university places were among the other inducements offered to the sons and daughters of IOC members.

Ganga and nine others were forced out during the subsequent 22- month long investigation, but they were minor players, mainly from poor African nations. South Korea's Kim Un Yong, a much more powerful figure, was given "a most serious of warnings" by the IOC's ethics panel.

Kim, a former leading light in Korea's infamous Central Intelligence Agency, was later investigated by the same ethics committee over claims he tried to bribe fellow members to vote for him in the race to succeed Samaranch as president.

The ethics committee threw out the charges. But this was the same ethics committee chaired by Judge Keba Mbaye, the man who signed Kim's nomination papers for the presidency.

"This is a childish, juvenile and unimportant organisation and we wouldn't care about them if they were simply rearranging dominoes in Bellshill, but they are not," said Jennings.