Undemocratic IOC should be abolished

Olympics Godfather Samaranch says he's surprised. He's never heard of allegations that members of his International Olympic Committee solicit college scholarships and other goodies from cities hoping to stage the Games.

All hundred-plus of them are, he frequently asserts, `one hundred per cent clean'.

IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch is getting old. He's 78 now and has controlled the IOC for 18 years. Perhaps his memory is clouding.

Come back with me a dozen years to when the Swedes campaigned for the Winter Olympics. They too got hit by the sleazy demands of IOC members. I know this - and can prove it - because I've been delving in the archives of the bid committee based in Falun in central Sweden. It's a treasure trove for Olympic sceptics.

I'd heard rumours that some IOC members pressurise bidding cities to arrange the education of their offspring. One particular name comes up routinely. Swaziland's David Sibandze. Off-record Olympic officials whisper that the best interests of David's eight children are always high on his list of Olympic priorities.

Tucked away, among thousands of pages of confidential letters, memos, budgets and hospitality bills in the Falun archive, there was David, at it again.

The evidence was a copy of a letter, dated February 28th 1986, to this guardian of Olympic morality, written by Bo Bengtson, a former general secretary of the Swedish national Olympic committee. Sweden had lost repeated bids to stage the Games and was desperate to please IOC members - and vulnerable to any shakedown artist.

"Dear Mr Sibandze, dear friend," began Bengtson's letter. Recalling their first meeting two months earlier, the Swedish official continued: "In our informal and very friendly talks, you informed us that your son would like to continue his studies in our country . . . the committee has now entrusted me with the task to investigate whether whose wishes of your son can be realised."

The letter goes on to reveal how these squalid Olympic deals are done.

Initially, reported Bengtson, the picture looked gloomy. "Applications for studies in Sweden should have been made before December 1st 1985." But here was good news. His daughter "who for many years served in the Swedish Ministry of Education" had been helping.

Bengtson was introduced to a "good friend" and he reassured Sibandze: "I may be able to benefit from these personal contacts when trying to be of some help to you son."

And he concluded: "Please, be sure that I am prepared and willing to be of all possible help."

The Falun bid leader during two attempts to secure the Games was Lars Eggertz, a prominent Swedish businessman of impeccable integrity. "The matter was eventually arranged and Sibandze was informed," Eggertz told me. "We learnt later that all the bidding cities had been asked the same question."

To the best of my knowledge, Sibandze junior did not take up the place. "Perhaps he went to the Sorbonne," joked Eggertz, revealing his bitterness that Albertville in France defeated Falun for the Winter Games of 1992.

Bengtson, now dead, was regarded as a decent man, not the type to be mired in sleaze. But he was and his lapse bears out one of the many allegations made by dissident senior IOC member Marc Hodler in Lausanne this last few days.

Hodler, now 80, but as quick of mind as ever, railed at his IOC colleagues for soliciting college scholarships from the organisers of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. A confidential document had been leaked to a local TV station, disclosing that around $400,000 was spent on college places for relatives of African IOC members. Subsequently it's come out that visiting IOC officials received $28,000 worth of secret, free, medical treatment.

Only yesterday it was disclosed that Sibandze's son, Sibu, was given a job at the city hall in Salt Lake City in 1993 and attended the University of Utah.

After the leaking of the document, there followed a spate of admissions from other cities around the world which have bid for the Games in recent years, that improper demands had been made of them by IOC members.

Hodler, who has become increasingly depressed at the unchecked corruption at the IOC, put the blame for initiating impropriety squarely on his colleagues - like Sibandze - rather than on the shoulders of the would-be Olympic hosts. "Salt Lake City," he maintained, "was a victim of blackmail and villains."

The scandal has infuriated IOC president Samaranch who always insists that allegations against his members are unfounded. And Samaranch has maintained, despite the evidence emerging daily, that he has never heard of this racketeering before and that any investigation must be confined to the shenanigans in Utah.

Back in the Falun archive I found more evidence of unseemly activities by the IOC - and of how they have covered them up. The bid committee flew 37 IOC members and their retinues of family and friends to the city at Easter 1985. Their purpose: to inspect the Falun sports facilities. The king and queen hosted dinner when they arrived, and next morning two Asian IOC members immediately left for home, declining to view any facilities.

There's long been rumours of IOC members soliciting sexual favours from the hostesses who work for every bid. In Falun it became more than a rumour. The IOC caravan moved on to Stockholm where, late at night in the Grand Hotel, an African IOC member approached two of the Falun hostesses for sex. Rejected, he grabbed a third woman in a lift with the demand "Get your clothes off and I'll vote for your city. Don't - and I won't."

She too declined but was still in tears the next day. Bid leader Eggertz reported the incident to a senior IOC member who assured him that action would be taken.

Another Swedish sports official wrote privately to Dick Pound, a senior IOC member, a member of the IOC's executive board and the man whom Samaranch appointed last week to investigate and report on the Salt Lake scandals.

Pound's confidential replay can be found in the Falun archive. On November 4th 1986 he wrote: "It is always with regret that I hear that some IOC members may have made improper personal requests from candidate cities, I expect that if specific examples of this (with names) were reported to the IOC, the IOC could then be in a position to take appropriate steps. Without formal requests, however, it is very difficult to do anything. That is a judgmental matter which I leave to you."

Pound, the man entrusted to conduct a searching inquiry in the 1990s, showed scant determination to root out the truth of allegations made in the 1980s.

But they didn't go away. Two years later Eggertz published a book about Falun's treatment by the IOC. In it he catalogued the offensive behaviour of some IOC members, including the attack on the hostess. The IOC, expecting the usual panegyric from supplicant cities, had the book translated into English. When he read it, Samaranch was incensed and his anger showed at his next meeting with senior officials.

The minutes of the meeting reveal that: "The president requested the advice of the board members as to whether the IOC should compose a letter addressed to the Swedish national Olympic committee, expressing its surprise and dissatisfaction over the text of Mr Eggertz's `book.' "

Here's the advice of one of his most senior members: "Mr Pound was of the opinion that it would be wise to take no action," says the record. The board concurred.

But action was taken. Samaranch sent an unequivocal message to the sex monster. He appointed him to represent the IOC on official missions. Among the countries that has had to roll out the red carpet for him in recent years is Sweden.

The problem today is not the IOC members but the IOC itself. It is an anachronism in an age when the ballot box has reappeared from Lithuania to Vladivostock and military juntas no longer hold sway in Latin America. Nelson Mandela occupies the president's mansion in Cape Town.

Flying in the face of this desire for democracy is the IOC. Samaranch, who learned his authoritarian ways as sports minister in Franco's fascist Spain, has sole right to appoint new members. They are not elected from their national sports bodies, and this wealthy, secretive organisation is not remotely accountable to sport - nor the wider world.

Recent Samaranch appointments have included deposed Indonesian dictator Suharto's close crony Bob Hasan, worth $3 billion and probably the world's biggest rain-forest logger, and Kun Hee Lee, boss of Korean conglomerate Samsung and convicted in a Seoul court two years ago of paying massive bribes to a former state president.

We may cherish the Olympic Games, but there's little need for the IOC. The latest disclosures show it incapable of carrying out its self-appointed mandate to foster idealism.

It's time for a truly independent body - perhaps UNESCO could lend a helping hand - to set about the abolition of the IOC and its replacement by a democratically-elected body which makes its accounts and decisions open to public scrutiny and is more attuned to our aspirations for the coming century.

Andrew Jennings is author of The New Lords of the Rings; Olympic Corruption and how to buy Gold Medals, Pocket Books, £6.99.