Thirteen people -- including six related to members of the International Olympic Committee -- received payments totaling nearly $400,000 through a program established during the bid for the 2002 Winter Games.
But the Salt Lake Organizing Committee won't name either the participants in the program or the IOC members involved, other than to say they were predominantly from African countries."We don't feel exposing them to public scrutiny would be of any benefit to them," Frank Joklik, chief executive officer of the organizing committee, said during press briefings Tuesday.
Money to fund the program, which SLOC says was intended to benefit students and athletes from developing countries, came from the more than $15.3 million raised privately to bid for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games.
Joklik said again Tuesday that the payments were not meant to influence members of the IOC to support Salt Lake City in its bid effort, even though the African vote was considered crucial.
"This was such a minute part ofthat effort that to stretch it to a campaign of vote influencing rather than a campaign to work in the spirit of the Olympic movement I don't think is justified," Joklik said.
Joklik said the existence of the program was "widely known" among members of the community. However, the program was never discussed publicly until a letter from a SLOC vice president was leaked to the media two weeks ago.
SLOC undertook an internal review of the program based on the letter, which described a $10,000-plus tuition payment in 1996 to Sonia Essomba, daughter of the IOC member from Cameroon.
Her father, Rene Essomba, was a prominent medical doctor who also headed the national Olympic committee in Cameroon and was a leader of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa. He died earlier this year.
Joklik said program participants were nominated by their national Olympic committees and then selected by bid committee officials based on their leadership qualities.
"I don't think it's really surprising that six of of the 13 were related to IOC members," he said. Although Joklik was chairman of the bid committee, he said he did not participate in the selection process.
There was no record found of the $10,000-plus payment to Essomba mentioned in the letter, said SLOC finance director Gordon Crabtree, who headed the review of the program. Joklik said he was confident it was never made.
He said program participants received checks for between $500 and $1,000 a month to cover their living expenses and had their tuition paid at schools in the United States.
The schools they attended included the University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah Valley State College and the University of Florida. Essomba attended American University in Washington, D.C.
Three participants -- two Sudanese track and field athletes and their coach -- went to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Their trip was funded with help from the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Sources told the Deseret News that besides Cameroon and Sudan, other national Olympic committees that benefited from the program included Mongolia and Russia.
The Mongolian and Russian national Olympic committees received funds to send a total of three people to the United States to learn to speak English, the sources said.
Just how much Essomba or the other participants received was not made available. Crabtree said Essomba was in the program for two to three years. The letter indicated payments to her ended in 1996.
Crabtree said the last payment to a student in the program was made in October of this year, although no new participants were added after the 2002 Winter Games were awarded to Salt Lake City by the IOC in June 1995.
The assistance program was the bulk of the estimated $500,000 spent to assist national Olympic committees since 1991, the year that Salt Lake City lost the 1998 Winter Games to Nagano, Japan.
Most of that money was spent in 1995. The rest of the $500,000 or so went for purchases such as sporting equipment including 200 balls sent to an unnamed nation, Crabtree said.
Salt Lake had paid special attention throughout the bid effort to African IOC members, whose votes are considered up for grabs when it comes to the Winter Olympics.
Their support was considered so critical that one member of the bid committee traveled to Africa some 20 times and spent the three weeks before the IOC vote roaming the continent.
As many as 16 of the 17 votes from Africa went to Salt Lake City, sources said at the time the decision was made. Salt Lake City won the 2002 Winter Games with 54 of the 92 votes cast, an unprecedented first-round ballot victory.
Joklik said Tuesday there won't be further research done into other bid committee expenses being questioned, such as the payment of medical bills for IOC members.
Joklik said Crabtree had already spent almost two weeks digging through the old records to come up with the numbers released Tuesday. "It's time he got back to work," Joklik said, calling the effort "distracting."
The issue is expected to come up later this week, when Joklik and other SLOC officials arrive in Lausanne, Switzerland, for a quarterly meeting of the IOC Executive Board.