Word: ioc
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...scandal began last month with the discovery that the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) had paid or arranged for $800,000 in cash, gifts and services including medical care and college scholarships to International Olympic Committee (IOC) members who voted in the city's successful bid to host the 2002 Winter Games. In the ensuing weeks, heads rolled at the top of SLOC's leadership, four IOC members resigned and five others were suspended...
...SLOC and the IOC members targeted--many from Africa and South America--are mere scapegoats. In fact, there was nothing particularly extraordinary about the lavish treatment the IOC members received from Salt Lake City. In recent weeks, reports have surfaced detailing hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from other host cities. Sydney officials have acknowledged paying two African members $70,000 the night before the IOC voted to award the 2000 Summer Games to Sydney--a bid it won over Beijing by a mere two votes. (Sydney officials have remained defiantly unapologetic in the wake of the revelations...
...business in the rest of the world. (In the United States, we have "soft money" instead.) Salt Lake, with its squeaky-clean reputation as a heavily religious community, had the misfortune of being the first city to get caught, the victim of intense, some say excessive, scrutiny from an IOC looking for answers. And the saddest part of the story is that the payoff effort wasn't even necessary: Salt Lake beat Quebec in the bidding by a landslide...
...ultimate blame must rest with IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who has long ignored rumored improprieties, failed to enforce conflict-of-interest guidelines and through his own example fostered a bid system built on bribes and lavish gifts. Samaranch, who receives no salary from the IOC, has admitted that his extravagant lifestyle, one rivaled only by heads of state, costs the IOC, benefactors and host cities hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. (Others place estimates in the millions.) Samaranch has defended those gifts, saying they do not constitute a conflict of interest because he lacks a vote in selecting...
...determine the entire fate of economies with a few choice words. A man so influential and powerful cannot be accepting a $16,000 Samurai sword from Nagano or a $300,000 international peace prize from Olympic affiliates in Seoul. And he cannot do so without expecting the IOC rank-and-file to follow his example. The Barcelona gentleman should do what many have been calling on him to do: step down and accept responsibility for steering the Olympic movement in the direction it has taken under his leadership...