Olympic clean-up act announced

The most radical reforms in the history of the Olympics, including a complete overhaul of the way cities bid to host the games, were announced yesterday following publication of an investigation into a corruption and bribery scandal which rocked the movement.

The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Executive Board also announced at a packed press conference in Lausanne that six IOC members should be expelled, while investigations will continue into three others for their part in taking bribes, gifts and scholarships worth an estimated £600,000 from the organisers of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Further investigations will continue into other cities which have bid for the Games, and the IOC is also to set up an independent ethics committee to oversee future bids.

Despite the scandal, the board announced that both the Salt Lake City Games and the 2002 Summer Olympics in Sydney, which has also been hit by controversy, will go ahead as planned.

The six members who will be recommended for expulsion at a special IOC meeting in March, when all 112 members will vote on the issue, are from Ecuador, Kenya, Sudan, Chile, Mali and Congo. The three who will continue to be investigated include a Russian, an IOC member from Ivory Coast, and South Korean Kim Un-young, who was once tipped as a future replacement to IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. Another member was given a warning over his actions.

The members of the investigating committee are all legal experts and they will have made sure that any decision to throw out members is watertight. However, the crisis is far from over for the IOC.

Under the rules, the general assembly must vote by two-thirds for the decision to expel a member to be rubber-stamped. Lobbying is sure to be intense during the next few weeks as the six members try to drum up the support which will save them the humiliation of being among the first members kicked out of sport's most exclusive club.

Three other members had already resigned from the IOC for their involvement in the bribery scandal which has embarrassed the Olympic movement, and revealed the corrupt practices of some IOC members who accepted cash and gifts in exchange for supporting a particular city's bid to host the Games.

In addition to the damaging Salt Lake City revelations, which surfaced last month, other organising committees have come forward claiming that they either gave or were asked for money or gifts from IOC members in return for support.

The investigation into the Salt Lake City scandal was conducted by IOC vice-president Dick Pound, who vowed yesterday that the Olympic movement would continue to reform.

He said: "The conduct of certain IOC members was contrary to everything the Olympic movement has grown to represent. It dishonours all those who believe in the Olympic dream. We now have the opportunity to reform and strengthen this movement."

Samaranch began yesterday's press conference by apologising to "athletes, the people of Salt Lake City and the global Olympic family."

He added: "These members have done great harm to the Olympic ideal; now the greatest service to the Olympic movement is for them to simply accept their fate.

"My apology is for the actions of those IOC members who violated the bidding process for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games."

The most radical reform, however, is a complete overhaul of the bidding process, which will come into place for the 2006 Winter Games.

Under the new system, IOC members will lose the right to vote for a city bidding for the games. An independent committee - made up of eight IOC members, athletes, and a representative of the Winter Sports Federation and the National Olympic Committee - will decide on the host city.

Samaranch, aged 78, announced yesterday that he had no intention of resigning but he would put his position to a vote at an extraordinary meeting of the IOC in March.

Samaranch, who was elected in 1980, is due to retire in 2001 and has been heralded as the man responsible for attracting multi-million corporate sponsorship deals. While these have made the Olympic Games a lucrative financial venture, they are also seen as being responsible for corruption among some IOC members.

The IOC president added: "My hope is to leave for my successor a reformed IOC with the prestige it deserves. The executive board have full confidence in my leadership."

Organisers of the failed Manchester 2000 bid, which cost £7.5 million, said yesterday that they should receive compensation from the IOC.