It seems surprising to some, but only two people are being held responsible for more than $1 million in cash, scholarships, trips, gifts and other inducements offered to members of the International Olympic Committee.
Tom Welch and Dave Johnson were named again and again by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee Board of Ethics in a 250-page report that appears to clear the business leaders who served as bid committee trustees of any wrongdoing."It's the 'Tom and Dave Show,' " Welch's lawyer, Tom Schaffer, said sarcastically. "Either (the bid trustees) didn't want to look, or they looked and they didn't care. Either way, somebody else bears some responsibility."
The two top officials of Salt Lake City's campaign for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games were already banished from SLOC when the report was released Tuesday to the organizing committee's board of trustees.
Welch quit as president of SLOC in 1997, after being charged with spouse abuse. Johnson was forced to resign his vice-president's post last month, as new details of the scandal surrounding the bid effort surfaced.
But many of the same business leaders who were aggressively pursuing the Olympics continue to sit on SLOC's board of trustees. That's not likely to change now.
One such business leader considered a trusted adviser to both the bid and organizing committees is Spence Eccles of First Security Bank. Eccles has said he had no knowledge of any of the questionable bid activities.
"If (the report) says that, then it says the truth," Eccles told reporters after the trustees meeting. "We've made a commitment to have the finest Olympics within our budget, and I would like to see that through."
Eccles will no doubt be able to do just that. While the ethics board did suggest that the board could have exercised more oversight, it also said the trustees were not guilty of overt ethical violations.
Another local business leader, Bennie Smith, was not found to have profited from assisting Jean-Claude Ganga, an IOC member from the Congo, with a land deal. The ethics board determined his conduct was not unethical.
Frank Joklik, the acting president of SLOC, was also cited in the report for writing to the Weyerhauser Company seeking a job for the now ex-husband of Pirjo Haggman, an IOC member from Finland who resigned in the scandal.
Joklik also was told about scholarship payments being made on behalf of the son of the IOC member from Libya in May 1998. The payments continued through October. Joklik told the ethics board he did not remember.
David Jordan, a former U.S. attorney and a member of the ethics committee, declined to characterize Joklik's activities. "We have tried to lay out the facts for you," he said.
Joklik told reporters he felt he did nothing wrong.
Trustees vindicated?
Gov. Mike Leavitt, who, along with Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini, appoints the trustees, said after the report was issued that he doesn't intend to dismiss any of them.
Welch has contended that the governor, acting SLOC President Frank Joklik and other trustees knew about the cash payments and other questionable activities. Leavitt said the report shows that's not true.
"Those who would deceive would also defame," the governor said.
Schaffer said he couldn't understand how the "astute business people" charged with overseeing the bid managed to miss more than $1 million in expenses.
The budget for the 2002 Winter Games bid was more than $7 million, almost all of it raised by bid trustees and other community leaders. None of the public money contributed to the bid was misused, according to the ethics board.
"We were just doing what we needed to do to influence the IOC," Welch's attorney said. "If people don't like what we were doing, there was evidence for them to see and tell us to stop doing it."
Jordan said it was clear everyone involved wanted badly to win the bid for the 2002 Winter Games after losing the 1998 Winter Games to Nagano, Japan, in 1991.
The ethics board was told that the Nagano bid committee gave members of the IOC video cameras just before the vote in Birmingham, England, while Salt Lake City handed out disposable cameras. Nagano won the bid, 46-42.
"It's clear the board of trustees, political leaders and the community as a whole had expectations" of Welch and Johnson, Jordan said. But he said the end did not justify the means they chose.
Bid trustees did hear about two incidents before the IOC vote in 1991. Welch was asked for money "to swing some votes" by the son of Jean-Claude Ganga, the IOC member from the Congo, and an unidentified broker seeking $35,000.
Jordan said neither offer was accepted but were reported to trustees by Welch. The trustees, Jordan said, told the ethics board the offers were inappropriate, a message they said they passed on to Welch at the time.
Trustees questioned?
The report's absolution of the board members did not go unnoticed. The ethics board appeared to have gone "to some lengths to protect the board," Salt Lake City Council Chairman Keith Christensen said.
"You wonder if there was this great pattern of deception going on why the board members didn't do more to find out what was happening," Christensen said.
Local activist Glenn Bailey, spokesman for a group that wants to see disadvantaged Utahns benefit from the Olympics, said he wants to see resignations from the board of trustees.
"Despite the fact they've managed to make scapegoats of two people, it doesn't seem plausible" the board didn't know what was going on. "It just doesn't make sense."
Longtime Games critic Steve Pace offered a stronger statement by carrying a paint can labeled, "Olympic whitewash" through the meeting Tuesday where the ethic board report was released.
Welch is honeymooning through the end of the month and was unavailable for comment. Johnson, who said he had not yet seen the report, referred a reporter to his attorney, Max Wheeler. Wheeler did not return calls by press time.
Welch's and Johnson's devotion to their duties was noted in a footnote in the ethics board report: "They deserve the bulk of the credit for bringing the Olympic Games to Salt Lake City. Their efforts were relentless . . . "
Disgusting and disturbing
What Welch and Johnson did to win the 2002 Winter Games was described as "disgusting" and "disturbing" by SLOC Chairman Bob Garff. The ethics board merely went as far as to label their actions "unethical."
The five volunteers who make up the ethics board provided more than 300 pages of details to support their conclusion, much of it in the form of documents such as canceled checks and letters to and from Welch and Johnson.
The voluminous report details everything from shopping trips for rugs and draperies at Wal-Mart that ran up a bid committee employee's credit card to the maximum, to at least $180,000 in cash payments made to four IOC members.
There were trips to Paris, Disneyland and the Super Bowl for IOC members and their families. Several children of IOC members lived in the United States at the expense of the bid committee on "scholarships." Some did not attend school.
Consultants helped. The report stated the hired guns earned more than $250,000 and "appear to have facilitated many of the introductions that led to payments to the relatives of IOC members."
According to Jordan, the money and gifts given to the IOC members did not amount to bribery because the members did not promise their votes as part of the transaction.
The ethics board was not looking for criminal acts. The FBI and other federal agencies investigating the bid are. They have already subpoenaed several former bid committee employees.
Among those who have been asked to provide information are Welch's former secretary, Stephanie Pate, and the former treasurer of the bid, Craig Peterson. Neither Pate nor Peterson cooperated with the ethics board investigation.
More than the IOC report
The five volunteers serving on the ethics board did collect much more information that a similar group of IOC members did. Last month, the IOC issued a report on its findings that implicated 14 members.
IOC Vice President Dick Pound, the head of the IOC commission investigating Salt Lake City's Olympic bid, told reporters Tuesday the ethics board report will be examined. He had not yet seen a copy.
A special meeting of all 111 current members of the IOC is scheduled for March so those deemed guilty of wrongdoing can be expelled. So far, five members are targeted for removal.
Four other IOC members have resigned, three remain under investigation, one received a warning and one has died. Ten more IOC members were identified in the SLOC report.
Pound said his commission had a lot of help from SLOC but apparently not from the ethics board. "I don't know that the people who were helping us were necessarily privy to everything the independent committee had," he said.
"There's far more material out there than we've seen," Pound said. "I don't think anybody is trying to hide anything from us. (Information) came at different times and from different directions."
USOC report due soon
The U.S. Olympic Committee is also winding up its investigation into Salt Lake City's bid, but USOC Deputy Secretary General John Krimsky said he'd be surprised if there was a lot of new information turned up.
The USOC has already been connected to the Salt Lake scandal.
A senior official in charge of international relations, Alfredo La Mont, resigned last month after a USOC internal investigation uncovered a consulting contract he had with the bid committee.
The ethics board report cites a November 1995 e-mail exchange between La Mont and two other USOC staff directors that refers to an agreement to train Sudanese athletes as part of Salt Lake City's bid.
"A lot of promises were made to secure votes," La Mont wrote. "Our and SLC's debt is to train them for Atlanta."
USOC Assistant Executive Director Tom Wilkinson wrote that the USOC had to pick up the tab because "a deal is a deal and Sudan delivered." He continued, "May need Sudan again in future. Don't burn bridges."
USOC Executive Director Dick Schultz dismissed the e-mails Tuesday. The USOC had already acknowledged helping to bring the Sudanese athletes to the Colorado Springs training site.
Schultz said that while the USOC was committed to helping Salt Lake City get the Games, there was no attempt to buy votes.
Deseret News staff writers Alan Edwards and Ray Boren contributed to this report.