Word: ioc
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Operating under the theory that your palms can't be greased if you don't hang out with the greasers, International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch on Sunday easily pushed through the hardest part of his recent batch of reform proposals: keeping IOC members from making financially tempting visits to cities looking to host the games. Many reluctant members grumbled that such a ban implied they couldn't be trusted, although one might think that the haul that several of their former colleagues extorted out of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee - which included silver, scholarships for their kids...
...Will this, as well as other measures, such as lowering the maximum age for delegates and limiting the time a president can serve, be enough to restore the IOC's reputation? Maybe. The pressure to reform is considerable: Major corporations, such as Coke and IBM, which send the IOC $50 million checks so that they can use the Olympic rings in their ads, are not amused with the committee's image as a bunch of shameless shakedown artists. But Samaranch doesn't inspire much confidence when he still largely blames the mess on the competing cities for putting...
...higher. Members of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee expect 10 percent of the first tickets made public to be auctioned off online. And who is looking out for the downtrodden members of the International Olympic Committee? Organizers are quick to assure the press that members of the IOC will be asked to pay for their own tickets. ?They?ll probably say no,? SLOC president Mitt Romney said at a press conference Thursday. ?But there?s no harm in asking.? Romney shouldn?t feel shy about billing IOC members; they're rumored to have some cash lying around...
After Salt Lake City's Olympic-bribery scandal forced the resignation or dismissal of 10 IOC members, the head of the Atlanta Olympic Committee, BILLY PAYNE, said his group won the 1996 Games without resorting to underhanded tactics. "We did not bribe anyone," he said in February. "We did not make cash payments. We did not give outrageous gifts." And in a June report to the House Commerce Committee investigating violations of federal bribery laws in Olympic bids, Payne and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young attested to only 38 items exceeding the $200-per-gift limit. However, after reviewing more...
However, after reviewing more than 30 boxes of documents from the Georgia Amateur Athletics Foundation, investigators say there were many gifts worth more than $1,000, including offers of scholarships to IOC family members. In fact, the discrepancies were so great that earlier this month the law firm that represented the city's Olympic committee asked Commerce if it could "amend" the report. Let's hope it is right this time...