Can L.A. handle scandal-ridden IOC for 2028 Olympics?

LOS ANGELES — A key step in the selection of an Olympic host city is the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission’s tour of candidate cities. These visits give IOC officials the chance to tour proposed venues and Olympic Village sites, ride subway lines and gauge the interest of the community in hosting the Games and then report back to the rest of the IOC’s 94 members prior to the host city elections.

Frankie Fredericks, the Brigham Young educated former Namibia sprinter who won four Olympic medals in the 1990s, was selected to chair the IOC evaluation commission of 2024 host city candidates.

But just weeks before Fredericks was scheduled to lead the IOC evaluation commission’s tours of Los Angeles and Paris he resigned in the wake of allegations that he received nearly $300,000 in bribes to help influence the IOC’s election of Rio de Janeiro as the 2016 Olympic Games host.

The bribery scandal involving Fredericks and Brazil’s Carlos Arthur Nuzman, a former IOC member who led the Rio bid, among others, is one of at least three ongoing law enforcement investigations or cases on three continents looking at corruption allegations against least five current or former IOC members.

It is against this backdrop of Olympic corruption that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is expected to sign a Host City Contract with the IOC and U.S. Olympic Committee on Wednesday in Lima, Peru, shortly after IOC members vote to award the 2028 Summer Olympics to the city and the 2024 Games to Paris.

“L.A. and the IOC have been such great partners for so many years,” Garcetti said. “We understand each other and we bring out the very best in one another. That’s called partnership and that’s what we want to build on.”

But in the wake of the latest round of IOC scandals, a growing number of Olympic historians, sports business analysts, economists and community activists are questioning Los Angeles’ partner in what is projected as an at least $5.3 billion project to host Southern California’s third Olympic Games.

“If you go on the past, the IOC has never been a great partner for cities,” said John Rennie Short, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County public policy professor who has written extensively about the Olympic movement.

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Corruption concerns

Six of the last 10 Olympic host cities have finished in the red, their combined deficits totaling more than $18 billion. Los Angeles 2028 and city officials said their bid’s reliance on the region’s wealth of existing world class facilities and $88 billion in previously approved infrastructure projects protects Los Angeles against the deficits that have proved catastrophic to the likes of Athens and Rio.

Yet for all of Los Angeles officials’ focus on creating a balanced budget or even a surplus, as was the case with the 1984 Games, the corruption scandals continue raise red flags with longtime IOC observers and others who are increasing asking whether Los Angeles really understands who it is about to go into business with.

“You always have to be careful, especially when you’ve established a (local) group of people above-board working on this 2028 Games bid,” said David Carter, executive director of USC’s Sports Business Institute. “These are people who are willing to stake their reputations and their careers on doing something noble in the community. Yes, someone’s going to make money off of it and others are going to be able to leverage their participation for business gain. But I think primarily they’re doing it because they want to (host the Games). If you look at these other bids, whether they’ve been the World Cup in the Middle East or the Olympic Games that come with great controversy, you seldom have seen anybody emerge with clean hands.

“I think if you blend those two together, you’ve got to watch very, very carefully, not that the LA 2028 group would wade into those troubled waters as everybody else, you just have to remember business isn’t always played the way you want it to be played. And I think everybody has to be mindful of the geopolitical and overall corruption concerns attached to these major global events that have been nothing short of consistent over the last nine years.”

Speaking during the Rio closing ceremony, IOC president Thomas Bach boasted that the 2016 Games would prove landmark Olympics.

“These Olympic Games are leaving a unique legacy for generations to come,” Bach said. “History will talk about a Rio de Janeiro before and a much better Rio de Janeiro after the Olympic Games.”

Or maybe not.

A tarnished legacy

It’s unlikely the dawn raid on Nuzman’s home by Brazilian authorities last Tuesday is the type of legacy Bach had in mind for the Rio Games. Brazilian investigators left the Nuzman residence with suitcases, documents and computers. Nuzman is but the latest high-profile IOC figure to be ensnared in French and Brazilian investigations into corruption within the IOC and the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body. Of particular interest to investigators are allegations that representatives of Rio’s Olympic efforts bribed IOC members to vote for the Brazilian city in the 2009 election of the 2016 host city.

“The Olympic Games were used as a big trampoline for acts of corruption,” Brazilian prosecutors said last week.

Nuzman, now an honorary IOC member, still wields power within the organization. He was awarded the Olympic Order by Bach for his “extraordinary contributions to the Olympics” and is a member of the IOC coordination commission for the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Nuzman, Brazilian prosecutors said, is also at the heart of a scheme funded by businessman Arthur Cesar de Menezes Soares Filho that led to the conviction of Rio de Janeiro governor Sergio Cabral in June on bribery and money-laundering charges.

“Nuzman was the bridge that linked the criminal scheme together,” Rio prosecutor Fabiana Schneider told reporters last week. “He was greasing the wheels to organized the payment of bribes from Cabral directly to African to members of the IOC, which was done via Arthur Soares.”

Nuzman’s attorney said his client is innocent of any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors said Nuzman was the link between Soares and Lamine Diack, a former influential IOC member from Senegal and IAAF president from 1999-2015. A British Virgin Island company linked to Soares deposited $2 million into a bank account belonging to Papa Massata Diack, Lamine Diack’s son and the former IAAF marketing director, three days before the 2009 IOC vote, according to Brazilian and French court documents. Pamodzi Sports Consulting, a Papa Diack company, then transferred $299,300 into a bank account in Seychelles for Yemli Limited, a company controlled by Fredericks. Fredericks was a “scrutineer” assigned by the IOC to monitor the 2009 election in Copenhagen that also included Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo.

Fredericks said he has done nothing wrong and that the payment was for “services rendered” in promoting track and field in Africa from 2007-11.

Lamine Diack has already been investigated by the IOC for taking bribes from a sport marketing firm and was arrested in November 2015 by French authorities who have accused him of taking at least $1.2 million in bribes while IAAF president to cover up positive drug tests for at least six Russian track and field athletes.

Brazilian attorneys representing the the IOC ethics commission have asked “Brazilian judicial authorities” for information related to the ongoing investigation into the 2009 IOC vote, IOC officials said Monday.

“The IOC Executive Board reaffirmed today that it goes without saying that infringements from the past will also be addressed. With regard to the investigation around the former IAAF President, Mr Lamine Diack, and his son, Mr Papa Massata Diack, the French prosecutor has stated that there are indications that payments have been made in return for votes ‘over the designation of host cities for the biggest global sporting events,’” the IOC said in a statement. “In this context, as far as votes for host cities of Olympic Games in the past are concerned, the IOC took immediate action. The IOC joined the inquiry as a ‘partie civile’ more than one year ago. Right after evidence was produced against Mr Lamine Diack, he lost his IOC honorary membership in November 2015, following actions by the IOC.”

The ethics commission, IOC officials said, “is following up on this matter. Where evidence is provided, we will act.”

Commitment to credibility

IOC officials continued to insist this week that the organization is “fully committed to protecting the integrity of sport”

“Credibility is one of the three pillars of Olympic Agenda 2020, the strategic roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement,” the IOC continued in its statement. “As part of this reform programme, a new good governance system of the IOC has been introduced. It is strong and comprehensive also with regard to the election of host cities for the Olympic Games. Like any other organisation, the IOC will not be immune to any infringements, but we have significantly strengthened the prevention and the sanctioning system.”

Bach and other top IOC officials have regularly trumpeted Agenda 2020 as proof that the organization is committed to moving in a new direction and rooting out the ethical scandals that have plagued the IOC for decades.

But the Rio bribery scandal has only further bolstered the argument among IOC critics that with Agenda 2020 is only lip service to reform.

“Agenda 2020 is more fortune cookie than policy,” said Jules Boykoff, author of “Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics.” “It’s like fortune cookie messages. It’s just what you say when you’re speaking behind the podium.”

Real reform, critics charge, won’t come without a major overhaul of the IOC membership.

“They’re not responsible to anyone else,” Short said. “They’re self-perpetuating elites. There’s no real voting. It’s like athletic people in various countries. It’s not the brightest and the best. And then there’s the Euro trash, Princess Anne (of Great Britain), Prince Albert (Monaco), the usual (crowd). Who in the 21st century thinks ‘You know what I’m going to get a bunch of royalty, I’m going to get a bunch sleazy people from athletic groups, and that’s the group I’m going to make?’”

The Rio bribery scandal isn’t the only baggage the IOC brings to Lima.

IOC executive board member Patrick Hickey of Ireland resigned over the weekend. Hickey was arrested during the Rio Games for his alleged role in an Olympic ticket-scalping operation. Hickey is scheduled to go to trial in November.

Then there’s Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait, an IOC member, president of the Association of National Olympic Committees and power broker both within the IOC and FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.

Ahmad resigned all his FIFA positions, including a spot on the influential FIFA Council, in April after he was implicated in court documents related to the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of Richard Lai, an Asian Football Confederation official. Lai pled guilty in federal court in New York to accepting a $950,000 bribe related to the 2011 FIFA presidential election.

Ahmad has been credited as being a driving force behind Bach being elected IOC president in 2013.

“Truly remains to be seen,” said Alma College professor Derick L. Hulme, author of “The Political Olympics: Moscow, Afghanistan, and the 1980 U.S. Boycott,” referring to Agenda 2020 and the IOC’s commitment to stamping out corruption. “The idea is essential. The IOC can’t be corrupt and it can’t be perceived to be corrupt. The vision was laid out; whether it has been delivered or not is entirely different question. And so the IOC has set a path forward that it needed to do. The challenge always is in rooting out corruption. It’s always more difficult than it appears at first, and I think we’re seeing that right now.”