Organised Crime and the Olympics

Something wonderful happened at the gateway to the Olympic stadium in Sydney when the torch finally arrived. The great Herb Elliott handed it to Raelene Boyle and it went on through the hands of Australia's legendary women athletes; Betty Cuthbert, Dawn Fraser, on through the stadium, to Shirley Strickland, to Shane Gould. Finally, Cathy Freeman lit the cauldron.

Was this the end of the legacy of the French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin - who excluded women from his Games? And was this a change of heart at the virtually all-male IOC , one of whose leading members in the weeks before the Olympics described the highest achievement of any female as being "a good corporate wife."

I think the fundamental responsibility of a reporter is to look behind the public faces of the organisations that rule our lives, to check, do they say and do the same in private as they do in public? And this applies as much in sport as any other area of life.

In Sydney on that glorious night, the IOC seemed, at last, to be doing justice to women. That was their public face.

In private, a few days earlier, the IOC selected 14 new members. All of them had been hovering on the edge of this promotion for years, had proved themselves uncritical members of the inward-looking "Olympic Family." All 14 new members were men. Not a woman in sight

Yet again, there's no POWER for women in Olympic sport. Sure, they're seen in most sports now; the sponsors insist. But, in the view of the IOC, running the Games is still men's work.

But it didn't end there. The IOC had a second chance to join the twentieth century, even if the rest of us are in the 21st. At the end of their pre-Games political and business meetings, the committee created five new "Honour Members." This was a mix of PR gimmick - and paying back some favours. Surely, this time, there was room for one woman? Even somebody who just looked like a woman?

Sadly not . . . . unless Henry Kissinger turns up in stockings and suspenders - and wearing a wig. Dr K - who did his best to bomb Cambodia into dust - is one of these new Honour Members and with him is the boss of the Fiat motor company Giovanni Agnelli [the winter sports facilities he owns near Torino will earn a lot from the winter Games of 2006] and Japanese billionaire Yoshiaki Tsutsumi.

Remember Mr Tsutsumi? His hotel chain and ski runs around Nagano profited when taxpayers were forced to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to build a bullet train and expressway from Tokyo to the winter Games of 1998.

Mr Tsutsumi and his new friends with their sometimes grubby images, can now expect to emerge from the Olympic reputation laundry, glowing with New! Clean! All-Male, Olympic Idealism! But will anybody care any more? Has corruption in the IOC and doping in the Olympics gone too far? Can they be rescued? Or do we walk away and leave them for the gangsters?

A tale of four cities
Gangsters are welcome into the Olympic family. It's a tale of four cities. In the last weekend of November 1998 - two years ago - the Great Olympic corruption scandal erupted in Salt Lake City - and the smell soon spread to Lausanne, Switzerland, home of the IOC.

That didn't surprise me. I'd been tracking and reporting greed and corruption at the IOC for a decade. Most of the members who were thrown out had been named by me over the years for a variety of disgraceful activities. And there's plenty more I've named who still haven't been thrown out.

The true story, the real story, of what was going desperately, catastrophically wrong in the Olympic movement wasn't to be found in either of those two cities.

The very same weekend - two years ago - as Olympic reporters were writing the Olympic corruption stories that would shake the world - I was 3,000 kilometres east of Lausanne in a drab convention hotel near the city of Antalya on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, in Asia. When the history of these troubled Olympic times is written the name of Antalya should be recorded as the City in which the wickedness of the Olympic sports leaders plunged to new depths. I sat at the back of a convention hall and watched a man said by the American, Russian, French and Australian governments to be a gangster and probably a drug trafficker - - appearing to take over an Olympic sports federation.

10 months later - in August of last year - I travelled to report on that sport's world championships in another city on another continent this time in America - and saw the inevitable result of what had happened in Antalya. I sat in a sports hall in Houston, Texas, and watched in horror as great athletes had their world titles stolen from them by crooked officials. One of the officials, sitting on the platform in Antalya, Turkey, was - and is - an IOC member. After we got the predictable result of the rigged elections he stepped down, walked over to the alleged gangster - and embraced him!

This same IOC member had a special responsibility at those world championships in Houston. He sat on a jury that had only one purpose; to protect the athletes from unscrupulous officials, officials who take bribes to fix results in amateur sport.

He sat a few feet away from me and we watched athletes being robbed. He did nothing. IOC members will always tell you "We put the athletes first." That isn't what I saw. This IOC member puts the athletes last and his colleagues atthe IOC know this and they do nothing. I won't forget the cities of Antalya and Houston, cities of Olympic disgrace.

12 months later they were at it again in a third city - the Olympic city of Sydney, Australia. By this time I'd published a book with several chapters about this sports federation and telling the stories of Antalya and Houston - with pictures of athletes being robbed. Oh there'll be no crookery this time, said the crooked officials. We've got spy cameras to watch how officials judge - yes - of course, I'm talking about Olympic boxing. If any judge could prove he'd been offered a bribe, we were told, that judge would be given twice as much money! We didn't hear any more of this nonsense.

When it came to the sport, the boxing, the biggest victims, as they had been in Houston, were the Cubans. One experienced television commentator told me later, "I assure you the Cuban boxers had to land 3 punches for every blow they scored." And this honest expert told me that in one final, where American Rocky Juarez lost to Kazakh boxer Bekzal Sattarkhano, was probably the most blatant fight fix at the Games. Another American was robbed that same night when he lost his gold medal to an Uzbek fighter.

The good news is that there was a very loud protest that night in Sydney and that protest came from an IOC member - and even better news is that this IOC member will be speaking at this conference, he will be speaking about Olympic reform and I hope you give Norway's Gerhard Heiberg a warm welcome.

Mr Heiberg did his best. The sad truth is that nobody took any notice and the crooked results stand. Not for the first time in recent Olympics, gold medals have been bought and sold.

To those 3 cities, Antalya, Houston and Sydney I'd add one more. Our 4th city with a dirty story is Paris. I was one of hundreds of reporters in Paris in June 1998 who experienced the amazing election of Joseph "Sepp" Blatter to replace his boss Mr Havelange as leader of world soccer.How did Mr Blatter defeat Sweden's Lennart Johansson? Is there truth in the allegations that suitcases full of cash were taken around delegates' hotels the night before the vote.

The next two years will see the two most important elections in world sport. Next July IOC president Samaranch will be replaced and the following year it looks like FIFA president Mr Blatter will face a challenge. If we are going to protect sport and serve our readers and listeners and viewers - we are going to have to discover the truth about how those elections are won and lost. Will the gangsters win again? Will you be reporting the private face of these organisations?

The legacy of Samaranch
What has gone wrong? How was it that gangsters, medal fixers and rich, drugged athletes found an open door at the Olympics? How could the decency of sport have been dragged down by IOC members touring the world with empty suitcases, demanding gifts, jobs, bribes, sex and college scholarships for their privileged children?

The answer can be found 30 years ago in the ambitions of a small group of determined men.

One wanted to get rich - he was the German businessman Horst Dassler, the owner in the 1970s and 80s of the Adidas company. Dassler saw, long before anybody else, that there were big profits to be made out of amateur sport. Horst Dassler, now dead, was the architect of modern international sport.

Another businessman with the same vision was the French businessman Andre Guelfi. In recent years Mr Guelfi has become world famous for his skills at secretly transferring millions of dollars from French to German politicians, through his bank accounts in Switzerland.

Both Mr Dassler and Mr Guelfi were friends of Mr Samaranch. Years later Mr Guelfi sold to Mr Samaranch some land in Lausanne which became the site for the Olympic museum.Mr Samaranch wanted to be President of the IOC. He was already a rich man. He was a loyal supporter of the fascist dictator General Franco in Spain and men like that got rich in a world where being a member of a trade union or demanding the right to vote could get you executed - executed by the garrotte - that medieval metal collar tightened oh so very slowly until your eyes burst from your head and your neck snapped.

Mr Samaranch wanted to put all that behind him. He could - if he could get to wash his dirty image clean in the Olympic reputation laundry. To get Samaranch elected Dassler and Guelfi turned for help to Russian IOC member Vitaly Smirnov. Communism had worked well for Mr Smirnov. And so too has capitalism. Left or Right, Vitaly prospers!

Dassler, Guelfi, Smirnov and Chowdhry organised the vote and Samaranch became IOC president in Moscow in 1980. Ever since, the Olympic Family has been shaped by Samaranch into a clone of the authoritarian state in Spain in which he had prospered.

There's no democracy in our Olympic movement. The power - and the money - is controlled by Samaranch and his closest allies. He has hand-picked most of the current members. He created the web of conflicts of interest which American Senator George Mitchell described last year as "interlocking directorates." Samaranch, rooted in the language of fascist Spain, calls it "Sacred Unity."

This ageing Barcelona neo-nazi who came to power in Spain on a tide of blood, now talks about Universal Human Rights and manipulates Olympic sport in his campaign to win himself a Nobel Peace Prize! One of the Great Taboos of the his Olympic world is talking about his 40-year record in fascist politics.

Another key player in the election of Samaranch 20 years ago was the Pakistan boxing referee Anwar Chowdhry. His reward was to be made president of international boxing in 1986 - and ever since the sport has become a byword for corruption and medal fixing. The scandals began at the notorious boxing tournament at the Seoul Games in 1988 and every world championship and Olympics since have been disgraced by fixed fights.

Why are they fixed? So that sports officials can arrive home from the Olympics showing off the success of their athletes. It brings them prestige which diverts attention from their secret activities.

Two years ago Mr Chowdhry was facing challenges, mostly from Europe. He looked around for new allies. "Come with me," he whispered to American boxing officials. "You haven't won many medals in recent years. Support me and see how your luck will change!"

In Antalya American Olympic sport gave its backing to Mr Chowdhry and his other new allies - rich businessmen from the new republics of the former Soviet Union. They got rid of the honest General Secretary, Mr Karl-Heinz Wehr, and put in place the American Mr Loring Baker. A year later, last year, in Houston, Texas, America won more world titles than ever before!

The Cuban team, sickened by the blatant corruption,walked out half-way through the Finals. Mr Samaranch's IOC Director of Sport, Mr Gilbert Felli, sat next to Mr Chowdhry and Mr Baker on the platform and said - nothing. On the jury - saying nothing as ever was Ugandan IOC member Major-General Francis Nyangweso. He's also a very important man in African Olympic sport.

The action moved on, to Sydney, six weeks ago. I mentioned the latest scandals earlier. You have to laugh at the American officials. They got medals in Houston - which everyone quickly forgot - and were rewarded with nothing in Sydney. No Olympic Golds for America this time. Not one.

One senior boxing official was missing from the Sydney tournament. The Australian government had refused Mr Gafur Rakhimov from Uzbekistan a visa. They said he was a danger to their society.

Mr Rakhimov, a member of Mr Chowdhry's executive committee since Antalya, had previously been banned from France. They said he was involved with the Mafia. The American FBI have files saying the same thing.

American boxing official Mr Loring Baker isn't bothered. When Mr Rakhimov was banned from Australia Mr Baker told reporters: The Rev Martin Luther King had an FBI file - and he went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize."

Mr Rakhimov is an associate of Russian IOC member Vitaly Smirnov. He's also a companion of Mr Andre Guelfi. He visits Mr Samaranch in Lausanne and welcomes him to Tashkent. Mr Rakhimov denies that he is Mafia. Indeed he is suing me in Australia - where he can't get a visa - and in England - where it is unlikely he will get in either. We'll have to wait for the judgement of the courts.

Viagra, vibrators and a violin
Some of you may have heard - there's a new performance enhancing drug that's popular in the Olympic Family. But it won't be made illegal - because the people taking it are the old men at the IOC.

This naughty secret should have been made public when the IOC investigated their own scandalous behaviour in Salt Lake City. But it's been covered up. This is astonishing. What on earth can have happened in Salt Lake City that embarrasses the IOC even more than disclosures about members seeking cash bribes, free education for their kids, gifts, vacations - and dates with lap dancers?

The answer is - Viagra. Lots of it. Viagra in industrial quantities. My thanks must go to the reporters of the Salt Lake Tribune who on Saturday, September the 30th - six weeks ago - revealed this comic tale.

It seems that in June 1998, six months before the corruption scandal erupted, a group of IOC members visited Salt Lake City for what they claimed was Very Important Business.

According to a secret memo discovered in the Salt Lake archives one member demanded to be driven to see a doctor. And as we know, if an IOC member wanted anything in Salt Lake City - they got it. He asked for - and received - a prescription for one thousand dollars worth of Viagra tablets. Whoopee!

Another memo just discovered in Utah reveals a further story about IOC members' demands.

In May 1995, while Salt Lake was campaigning for the Games of 2002, the bid officials got another whispered request. Would somebody go shopping for them? Go and buy them something rather special. A young man working on the team was given the job. Afterwards, he claimed the cost back on his expenses.

The amount of money was 74 dollars and 27 cents. That something special was - a vibrator.

I don't know a lot about these implements, but I guess that you get a lot of vibrator for seventy-four dollars.

Does it play music? Your favourite romantic aria? Does it light up in the dark? There's so much we still have to find out about the whacky world of the IOC.

That wasn't all on the IOC shopping list. Another item the Salt lake bidding team had to pay for was a five hundred dollar violin. Perhaps there's a new Olympic sport they will introduce soon. It requires Viagra, a vibrator and a violin. What I want to know is - do you get tested out of competition or immediately after you've won Gold!

Constant complaints from bidding cities
Will the IOC be refunding the cost of these items to Salt lake? We don't know. An IOC spokesman refused to discuss the story. There's a lot more they won't discuss. Let me take you back to the now notorious Toronto report. After the victory of Atlanta in 1990, the IOC received so many protests from the rival cities about the activities of their members that they held a private meeting to hear the complaints.

The Toronto team produced a detailed report of the abuses they'd suffered. They calculated they had been ripped off for around 800 thousand dollars. One of the tricks had been the ticket racket, worked for years by some members.

They had been sent two first class return tickets to visit Toronto. Some cashed them in and bought cheap tickets - others cashed them in and didn't bother to visit. I think that is a crime.

And because it was a racket that had been practised by so many for so long - it qualifies as an organised crime.

Members were doing it on a regular basis and the IOC leadership looked the other way. They tolerated these rip-offs.

Was this an accident? I don't think so. I believe that IOC president Samaranch has, during his 20 years in power, made corruption the lubrication of his Olympic dictatorship.

He was applying the policy he learned from another great criminal, his mentor the dictator Franco.

All dictatorships are corrupt. The Maximum Leader at the IOC surrounded himself with Yesmen who would be loyal to him - not to Olympic ideals. In return for that loyalty, they were permitted to go out into the wider world and loot and plunder.

It is not surprising that when Samaranch was under world-wide pressure to resign last year he got an overwhelming vote of confidence from his members.

Nearly every year since 1986 there's been serious evidence published in countries that bid for the games about IOC freeloading, graft and corruption. I summarised some and more - of this in a book in 1992.

Did the IOC ask me for my evidence? No instead, they got me a five-day jail sentence in their home town of Switzerland! So they've always been keen to cover up - and shoot the messenger.

As part of their so-called reforms they set up an Ethics Commission. Among the complaints they have received is evidence from Atlanta of massive freeloading and exploitation of the bidding team.

I have acquired a lot of the documentation from the secret archives of the Atlanta bid. There's plenty to investigate.

But last year - after considering the evidence in private - the saintly Judge Keba Mbaye from Senegal who heads this Commission said there was need for further action.

And they've come to the same view about complaints from a dozen or more other bidding cities.

So much for the New! Reformed! IOC.

A missed opportunity for change
But can you blame the IOC for covering up? Far too many journalists don't look behind the public face. Many of the problems at the IOC have been encouraged by the reluctance of the media to investigate the IOC.

Look at this reform process they went through last year. When the scandal broke - a scandal about ethics and morality - the IOC knee-jerk reaction was to not to reform but to spend 2 million dollars on the American PR agency Hill & Knowlton to work on improving their image.

This company's clever press releases became the story.

Look at what really happened. Instead of resigning in disgrace President Samaranch got away with presiding over his reform commission. He got away with packing it with IOC members and officials from Olympic sports federation and national Olympic committees who all depended on him for money and their careers. They set up impressive sounding Working Groups! They held Plenary Sessions!

The Wall Street Journal pointed out in a huge article last December that Samaranch had controlled the reform process at the IOC in the same way that he tried to get involved in the reform process in the mid-1980s in Spain - when that country set out to get rid of the legacy of the fascist dictatorship after General Franco died. He wasn't successful in Spain. But he got away with it at the IOC.

After six months of bogus debate and a few phoney changes - they cannot be called reforms - the same president and 90 per cent of the same members are still there for the foreseeable future, still enjoying the same privileges. They are still not accountable to sport, they still decide who will be new members and they insult us by saying this works better than democracy.

A handful of members, mostly from the developing world, have been made to take the blame for the fundamental, structural problems of the IOC. They have been expelled - while much worse people remain members of the organisation.

And at the end of this process in Lausanne last December, I stood and watched the TV reporters of the world outside the conference hall telling their viewers that the IOC had implemented "50 Stunning Reforms!"

They could have done something different. When the scandal broke an international group of former Olympic athletes set up an independent group they called OATH - Olympic Advocates Together Honourably.

OATH drafted a wonderful report setting out how the IOC could be reformed and made accountable to sport. OATH's suggestions were ignored. I have some of OATH's reports with me and I'd be glad to share them and photocopy them for anybody who would like to see what could have happened, but didn't.

The stories exposed by Australian reporters
This successful campaign to fool the reporters and the public was the priority at the IOC last year. They didn't have the time to notice or maybe they didn't care - what was happening a long way from Lausanne, in the cities of Antalya and Houston.

And so many of us assembled in Sydney, in the weeks before the Games begun. I think its important to pay tribute to the Australian reporters. The vast majority did their job as it should be done- and the Australian sports fans and public approved.

The reporters tore into the IOC for introducing an EPO test that wouldn't catch anybody. They challenged the IOC's sincerity over dope testing. In every way they gave the IOC the most unpleasant, daily diet of criticism ever in an Olympic city about to stage the Games.

Two big stories broke about the IOC - and the Australian reporters set the pace for the rest of the world.

A week before the Games the Australian Government announced that it had refused a visa to boxing official Mr Gafur Rakhimov. This was to "protect the safety and security of the Australian public." The government also banned a Hong Kong basketball official, Mr Carl Ching. It was revealed that a few years earlier, Mr Ching had been involved in moving the profits of heroin trafficking out of Australia.

Did the IOC thank the Australian government? Did Mr Samaranch say, "We are so happy that you have kept these people away from our sport?"

Not at all. Mr Rakhimov, we discovered, was moving up the Olympic ladder and in recent weeks had been appointed a vice-president of the Olympic Council of Asia.I've never had a lot of confidence in this organisation. Since it was created it has been controlled by the ruling Al-Sabah family from Kuwait - and one of its senior officials was paid 60 thousand dollars by the Salt Lake bidding committee to suggest names of IOC members who could be bribed. This gentleman was welcomed to Sydney by the IOC. He has not been reformed out of his Olympic position by the IOC.

Mr Samaranch attacked the Australian Government. How dare they ban any member of his Olympic family! The Australian press attacked him until he was forced to shut up.

But not for long. The Wall Street Journal reporters had been digging behind the public face of the IOC. They had been working hard, not in Sydney but in Jakarta. They obtained a copy of a confidential letter written by President Samaranch to the Attorney General of Indonesia.

It was very important, wrote Samaranch, that you release from prison our IOC member Mr Bob Hasan so that he can attend the Olympics. Some of you may know that Mr Hasan was a crony of the disgraced former Indonesian president Suharto and is being investigated for corruption under that regime. If convicted, he may spend the rest of his life in jail.

The Journal published that letter - and Australia was shocked. Samaranch appeared to be arguing that the wishes of the IOC were superior to any national government - or law enforcement agency.

Just imagine: If the IOC had managed to spring the unsavoury Bob Hasan from his Jakarta prison cell to take his place in the best seats. The clamour of the reporters to get interviews with him and the whirr of the motor drives would have drowned out the opening ceremonies. This would have been followed by the sponsors driving direct from the Olympic stadium to the airport.

The duty to reveal the private face of sports organisations
Next year will bring more stories where we should be looking behind the public face of the IOC.

In June we can expect the trial in Salt Lake City of Olympic bid leaders Tom Welch and David Johnson. Expect more damaging disclosures about the IOC.

And just across the water from here, in Sweden, the public prosecutor is investigating allegations that Stockholm paid bribes in an attempt to win the Games of 2004. If there are indictments - be sure that other public prosecutors in other cities will start their own investigations into Olympic bids. Maybe they are already.

In July the IOC will elect a successor to Samaranch. Among the candidates we expect to see Richard Pound, speaking here later this week and Germany's Thomas Bach, backed by South Korea's Kim Un Yong. Another candidate may be Belgium's Jacques Rogge. Two weeks ago Dr Rogge announced: "A dark page of the IOC's history has definitively be turned with the reforms and the success of the Sydney Games."

That's what they would like you to believe. That is the public face of the IOC - and maybe it's next leader.

But it is not all over and it won't be until the IOC is accountable to sport. Last year America's Senator John McCain pointed out that in normal circumstances, politicians should stay out of sport. But when the people who run sport have abused the public trust, through corruption and through not wanting to fight a real war against doping, the public authorities must get involved.

Politicians and governments will not do more to reform international sport unless we do our job properly and reveal the private face of sports organisations.

We have a lot of work to do.

Thank you.