The head of the 2002 Winter Games said it is defamatory to say backers of Salt Lake City's Olympic bid were trying to purchase votes when they provided financial assistance to families of Olympic officials.
Frank Joklik, the chief executive officer of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, spoke publicly about the issue for the first time to a reporter in Sydney, Australia, where he is visiting this week.Here at home, SLOC officials are researching records to come up with answers about a recently revealed program that paid for people connected with the Olympics to attend college in the United States and receive other assistance.
Little is known about the assistance program, apparently paid for with private donations. More than $14 million in private donations was raised to cover the costs of the 1998 and 2002 Winter Game bids.
The only recipient of the program to surface so far is the daughter of the late International Olympic Committee member from Cameroon, Africa, Rene Essomba.
The IOC overwhelmingly voted in a secret ballot in June 1995 to give Salt Lake City the 2002 Winter Games. Essomba, who was also president of Cameroon's national Olympic Committee, died earlier this year.
According to a copy of a September 1996 letter made public last week, Sonia Essomba was given a check from SLOC for more than $10,000, described as "our last payment for tuition" due to budget constraints.
A SLOC spokesman said the payment shouldn't be viewed as a bribe. Joklik reacted even more strongly in an interview with Ed Hula, editor of Around the Rings, an Olympic newsletter based in Sydney.
"I think it's a sort of defamation which is regrettable," Joklik was quoted as saying in a story that was published electronically on Wednesday. "The aid provided was not any sort of quid pro quo for anyone's vote, and there was not to my knowledge any suggestion of that."
Joklik also said in the story that the issue is not relevant to the organizing committee, describing the attention it is now receiving as "destructive and distracting."
SLOC is doing its best to produce records from the program, Joklik said, but some may no longer exist. The organizing committee has promised to make its findings public.
Joklik was chairman of the bid committee, but he said in the interview he had only general knowledge of the assistance program. Joklik said it was directed by bid president and former SLOC president Tom Welch.
The assistance program has already caught the attention of several Utah officials, who are concerned about the effect the payments will have on public confidence in Olympic organizers.
Joklik said that Utahns should feel good about the assistance given. "Anyone who is familiar with conditions in Africa . . . would have very little problem with rendering assistance there," he was quoted as saying.
"I really wonder sometimes with people who focus on such things in a negative manner whether they have experience of conditions in less privileged countries than the United States."
A SLOC spokesman had little to say Wednesday about Joklik's statements. "We were aware of the interview Mr. Joklik did in Sydney and defer to his comments," the spokesman, Frank Zang, said.
No details about the program are expected to be released until Joklik returns. He is scheduled to be back in Salt Lake City by the weekend, although he may fly back sooner.
Joklik, who lived for a number of years in Australia, is in Sydney this week to see his first grandchild as well as to meet with organizers of the 2000 Summer Games there.