It's no secret that backers of Salt Lake City's bid for the Winter Games spent a lot of money on everything from lavish meals to dental care for members of the International Olympic Committee.
Now it's an assistance program being described by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee as "humanitarian aid" that's focusing new attention on whether such expenditures amounted to an attempt at buying votes.According to a 1996 letter made public less than two weeks ago, the program provided more than $10,000 in tuition money to the daughter of an International Olympic Committee member attending college in the United States.
The Deseret News has learned that the money used for this assistance came from a program that totaled some $433,000 in the budget years ending June 30, 1994 and 1995. It's not known, however, how much of that program's funds were used for such assistance.
Organizers haven't had much to say about the program yet, other than to stress it was meant as a means to help people in Third World countries through their national Olympic committees.
Records from the bids for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games are being pieced together by organizing committee officials, who have promised to make their findings public. Officials are expected to make a statement before SLOC leaders leave later this week to attend a meeting of the IOC Executive Board in Lausanne, Switzerland, that begins Friday.
The September 1996 letter from Dave Johnson, a SLOC senior vice president, advises Sonia Essomba that "under the current budget structure, it will be difficult to continue the scholarship program with you."
It goes on to state that, "The enclosed check for $10,114.99 will have to be our last payment for tuition." Sonia Essomba's father, Rene Essomba, was the IOC member from Cameroon until his death earlier this year.
Rene Essomba, a prominent medical doctor, had also been the president of the Cameroon National Olympic Committee since 1972. He has yet to be replaced on the IOC.
The question of whether organizers spent money to influence IOC votes is no doubt going to be raised at the Switzerland meeting, when SLOC delivers its first progress report in more than six months.
Anita DeFrantz, an IOC vice president from the United States, said she doesn't understand why there is still interest in the bid. She said the discussion diverts attention away from the good done in the name of the Olympics.
"Whatever happened, happened with private money," DeFrantz said, noting that she was not a member of the bid committee and does not know the details of the program.
More than $14 million was raised to pay for the bids for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games. Most of the money came from Utah-based businesses, including ski areas, banks, law firms and utilities.
DeFrantz suggested Utahns shift their attention to the task at hand. "Focus on putting on the Games for the athletes. The IOC will have to deal with the IOC," she said.
Some details about the program are already beginning to surface, although it's still not known how many others benefited or what their relationship was to any of the 100-plus voting members of the IOC.
A source familiar with the bid budget told the Deseret News that money used for the assistance was described in financial statements as "National Olympic Committee Program."
According to an independent auditor's report for the budget years ending June 30, 1994 and 1995, some $433,000 was spent on that line item -- including more than $334,000 in 1995 alone.
It was in June 1995 that the IOC selected Salt Lake City in an unprecedented, first-round ballot over competing cities in Sweden, Canada and Switzerland.
The man behind the bid, Tom Welch, said the expenditures didn't affect the outcome of the IOC vote. Welch left the organizing committee last year after a decade of pursuing the Olympics.
"We won because we were the best city and to try to tie anything -- our support or the help we gave to international programs -- to that doesn't make any sense," Welch said.
Besides, he said, such assistance is expected from bidders. It's part of the price of admission to the so-called Olympic family, the collection of national and international officials associated with the Games.
"Any city that desires to become an Olympic city needs to recognize the responsibility they have to help develop sport and cross-cultural relationships with the Olympic community," Welch said.
Mike Moran, spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee, agrees.
"There is a requirement that if you're a member of the Olympic family . . . that you do everything you can to nurture that family," Moran said. "It's not written, not formal, but it's understood."
Moran said the USOC spends about $600,000 on what it calls "international relations grants" during a four-year budget cycle. The money is used to help other, less-affluent national Olympic committees.
And to help win votes when an American city is bidding for the Games. "We are eager to do this in South America or Africa where you have voting blocks," Moran said, describing the program as politically important.
"It may not be apparent or understandable to the public. But it is not corrupt," he said of the relationships established. "You need to do everything you can within ethical guidelines to get a bid."
The USOC program, however, is used to fund sports-related activities, Moran said. The only time SLOC has been involved was in 1996, when two athletes and a coach from Sudan were brought to the USOC training center in Colorado Springs.
Moran said the USOC is "anxious to see what (SLOC) is going to reveal" about paying for college tuition through its program. "It appears to us this is not an unethical matter, and bribery is a seriously exaggerated charge."
A bid official from the Swedish community of Ostersund, which lost the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City, suggested countries willing to make such contributions have an unfair advantage.
"We would consider it as a bribe," Christer Persson told the Deseret News from his home in Ostersund, citing as an example a gift of sporting equipment he said was made by the United States to an African nation he declined to name.
"We have understood now that we cannot win competitions against countries that have other cultures than we have in this respect because we can never do things like that," said Persson, head of the last of Ostersund's three bids.
He said there are "something like 10" members of the IOC who are more or less open to bribery but also declined to name them. "They never try themselves to do things like that, of course," Persson said.
"There are members of the IOC who are not very interested in the Winter Games, for instance, because they are not intending to send athletes. For them it doesn't matter," he said.
Those members, presumably from warm-weather nations in South America and Africa, are more willing to vote for a Winter Games candidate for "reasons other than being the best organization," Persson said.
Another Ostersund bid official, Bo Victor, told the local newspaper Lanstidningen that he'd been asked by a Russian member of the IOC to provide Swedish-made Volvo automobiles.
"He wanted me to broker a deal so that his nation's Olympic committee could get Volvos," Victor was quoted as saying. And that wasn't the only time the Ostersund bid committee was approached by a member of the IOC, he said.
"There have been a number (of IOC members) who have spoken in such a way as to make one wonder what they are after," Victor told Lanstidningen, saying the situation involves "a handful" of the 100-plus members.
Persson told the Deseret News that although he has heard Victor speak of the request for Volvos, he knows nothing about that incident. He also said he is no longer a Volvo dealer.
He's not optimistic about what will happen in the future. "It depends on how this business will be treated by the International Olympic Committee. If they want to accept it, I think it's bad for the Olympic movement."
And there may not be much incentive to make changes in the way bid cities do business, Persson suggested.
"I think most parts of the world are not interested in discussing things like this because they live with these marketing methods. They find it not as a bribe . . . they have other words for it."
Utah's Division of Consumer Protection Services has completed a review of documents related to the bid committee's fund-raising efforts that were filed to obtain status as a charitable organization.
"There isn't a problem from here," said Francine Giani, the head of the division. Giani said any challenge to what the bid committee did with its money "probably will have to come from the people making the donations."