Kevan Gosper, the Australian IOC member dragged this week into the scandal surrounding the bid for the 2002 Winter Games, isn't likely to face an inquisition by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's Board of Ethics.
A Thursday afternoon meeting of the board was called to deal with the issue, but Chairwoman Barbara Lockhart said she did not expect to reopen an investigation into Gosper based on allegations his family accepted a 1993 trip to Salt Lake City valued at $11,000.
Meanwhile, new information has surfaced showing bid committee officials knew Gosper intended to pay for his family's accommodations and that they billed him $275 a night for a Deer Valley condominium that actually cost the bid committee $375 a night.
Both Gosper and the International Olympic Committee's chief investigator into the bid scandal, Canadian Dick Pound, have labeled the bid committee's actions "entrapment." Pound, who like Gosper is an IOC vice president, told the Deseret News that his investigation found that the way bid records were kept "was bizarre, to put it kindly."
Pound said there has been little previous discussion about problems reconciling expense records from the bid compiled by SLOC because "nobody wanted to hear from the IOC at the time except about how guilty the IOC members were, . . . (they) didn't want to hear us say we weren't the only ones you should be looking at."
Gosper is not the only IOC member whose name may turn up as new records surface. The question of whether the bid committee misrepresented the actual costs of IOC visits — and whether IOC members knew that — is believed to be part of the federal government's ongoing criminal investigation into the scandal.
Lockhart said the ethics board intended to release a statement after Thursday's closed-door meeting to spell out its role in handling new charges related to the bid scandal. It was nearly a year ago that the board issued what's considered the definitive report on the more than $1 million in gifts and favors given to the IOC.
Gosper's name didn't appear in the 250-page report. Questions about the trip made by his wife and two children to Deer Valley became public this week after Gosper asked the IOC's own ethics commission to review allegations being made by a British journalist.
The story has been front-page news in Australia, where the 2000 Summer Games begin in September. Lockhart told the Deseret News Wednesday that the board would review the records related to the Gosper case.
Now, though, the focus seems to be on finding someone else to take on that responsibility. "We've got to sort this out," Lockhart said. "We weren't set up to be an investigative body."
She suggested the Gosper case could be turned over to a volunteer ethics officer that SLOC hopes to name soon.
Gosper has started defending himself after days of declining interviews. In an interview Thursday with Sydney's TUE radio, Gosper said Salt Lake bidders may have been trying to come up with the money needed to cover the cost of their questionable activities.
"They were involved in fraudulent activity. They were paying the scholarships. They were making payments to IOC members. They've been kicked out. They had to find sources of money from somewhere. I don't know, but I suspect money was just being moved around," Gosper told the radio station.
"Once you start moving around money, you can set documents up in any way, and you can become entrapped."