SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Salt Lake's Olympic bidders were done in by a desire to please, according to the IOC official whose report on Sunday detailed $440,710 spent by the bid on eight IOC members.
Nearly half the total -- $216,000 -- went to one member, Jean-Claude Ganga of The Republic of Congo. The figure includes $70,010 in direct payments, $17,000 in medical expenses, at least $115,000 in travel expenses for him and his family, and $14,000 in gifts and entertainment.The report, which did not include bid committee payments to the three members who resigned, one who died and two still under investigation, was issued at the end of a soul-wrenching weekend at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Six IOC members who were the recipients of the Salt Lake bid committee's largesse were ousted.
Embattled president Juan Antonio Samaranch said the action was taken to end "the ugliest chapter" ever for the world's biggest sports event, which in the last two decades has also become a billion-dollar business.
IOC vice president Dick Pound, who led the investigation into the payments, said Salt Lake's bid committee simply showed "a willingness to please."
"Nothing we saw amounted to a quid pro quo, the purchase and sale of a vote," he said.
IOC members were not accused of bribery or criminal conduct, but actions that broke the IOC oath and brought disrepute to the IOC, Pound said. Samaranch apologized to the citizens of Salt Lake.
In the city at the center of the Olympics' biggest scandal, Salt Lake Olympic organizers called Samaranch's apology "brave" and in turn apologized to the residents of Utah for some overzealous bid committee members.
"We are deeply saddened. Some of these actions should not have taken place," said Robert Garff, chairman of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.
Garff praised the "speed and efficiency" with which IOC investigated the matter, decided to investigate other cities' bids and came up with reforms for the way bid cities are chosen.
"It does validate what we have said all along: that these problems didn't start here but we hope they end here," he said.
Garff and Frank Joklik, the president of SLOC who has resigned but remains on the job while his successor is sought, declined to talk about details of the report issued in Lausanne.
And they refused to talk about matters still under investigation by SLOC's outside ethics panel, the Justice Department and the U.S. Olympic Committee. Utah's attorney general also plans an investigation.
Joklik did say, however, that SLOC is "not aware of any criminal conduct having been involved."
Garff said the ethics panel's report would be completed before Feb. 11, and he promised to take "decisive action" against anyone found to have acted improperly.
"We cannot change the past but we can have an enormous impact on the future," Garff said. "All of our efforts are dedicated to creating a new and better Olympic era."
The organizing committee will reevaluate its ethics policies; find new chief executive and chief operating officers; solidify sponsor support and restore public confidence, he said.
Senior vice president David Johnson was forced to resign Jan. 8, the same day former bid and organizing president Tom Welch was stripped of his pension and consulting contract. Two others, senior vice president of marketing and legal affairs Kelly Flint and licensing director Rod Hamson were placed on paid leave while the investigations are underway.
In Colorado Springs, Colo., United States Olympic Committee president William Hybl praised the decision to oust the six IOC members and said his committee could have done a better job overseeing the Salt Lake City bid.
"We look back and ask, 'Should we have been better detectives? Should we have done a better job at oversight of Salt Lake City?' The answer is yes, you can always do a better job," Hybl said.
"I can assure you in the future we're going to do better," he said. "The presence of the USOC should be to ensure that these types of practices don't go on with the bidding cities. We need to make sure it is a level playing field."
One section of the IOC report seemed to indicate Joklik had progressed from defending the bid committee's payments via its national Olympic committees program to saying on Jan. 8 that he knew nothing about the lavish spending. He was the volunteer chairman of the Salt Lake bid committee.
The IOC report notes that when the commission met Dec. 11 with Joklik, Johnson and Flint, "They defended the program and took the position that the payments were not connected with the bid and that there was no quid pro quo pertaining to them, i.e., no promise of support for the bid."
"The evident connection with the bidding process and the date profile of the payments were, however, inescapable," the report said.
The NOC program was established in late 1991 or early 1992 after Salt Lake lost its bid for the 1998 Winter Games to Nagano, Japan.
"It is not clear exactly to what degree the existence of the program was known by the bid committee as a whole, although we are advised by SLOC that it appears as a line item in the audited financial statements of the bid committee," the report said.