Future of IOC Hangs in Balance

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — An International Olympic Committee member who remains in relatively good standing was chatting casually with reporters Monday in the lobby of the luxurious Palace Hotel when they told him they were awaiting an appearance by Jean-Claude Ganga.

Ganga, of the Republic of Congo, is one of the Salt Lake City Six, members who have been recommended for expulsion for accepting payoffs of one kind or another during the city’s successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

The member looked anxiously toward the front door, telling the reporters he wanted to make sure he was gone from the lobby before Ganga arrived. It was too late. Ganga suddenly appeared with a small entourage from around a corner, spotted the IOC member and smiled.

The members smiled back, walked over to Ganga and kissed him on both cheeks.

It was an awkward moment, one of many that members will face this week as they gather in a convention center near IOC headquarters for an extraordinary session to consider reforms amid the Salt Lake City bribery scandal.

Near the top of Wednesday’s agenda is the vote to decide the fates of the six disgraced members.

It is no wonder that IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch has pleaded with them to resign in order to spare the rest of the membership the embarrassment of having to expel them.

But there is another reason Samaranch would like them to resign. That is because the rest of the members, the 91 expected to attend, might not deliver the two-thirds vote required to ratify their expulsion. In that case, it would be Samaranch who would be embarrassed and might have to resign.

Will that happen?

Probably not. Expected to receive a vote of confidence by acclamation Wednesday, the man referred to many IOC members simply as “The Leader” still exerts considerable influence.

But could it happen?

Definitely.

According to the IOC’s internal investigation, Ganga, 64, is the most notorious of the outlaws. He is alleged to have received payments into his personal bank account of $70,010, more than $17,000 for medical care for himself and his family, $14,000 in gifts and entertainment and $115,000 in travel expenses from Salt Lake City’s bid committee.

He also is alleged to have earned $60,000 on a real estate deal arranged by the bid committee’s former president after the 1995 vote.

But Ganga, in a preview of the 20-minute defense he will present to his colleagues before their vote, made a compelling case to reporters during his news conference in the lobby of the Palace Hotel. He even provided documentation to refute most charges against him.

The documentation he couldn’t produce, he said, was lost when his home was looted during civil unrest in the Republic of Congo.

He pleaded guilty only to being human.

“You have to bear in mind that the Olympic Games are organized by human beings,” he said. “They are not angels, they are not saints. If you want angels and saints, go to heaven to organize the Olympic Games.”

More worrisome for the IOC than his defense, though, was his offense.

He accused the IOC of targeting powerless Third World members, especially Africans. Of the 20 members who have been sanctioned, eight are Africans. Six Africans either have been recommended for expulsion or resigned.

“I think there is an obvious objective to exclude Africans from the center of decision making in world sports,” he said.

As for the reason he was personally implicated, he said that he made powerful enemies by organizing the African boycott of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and also by involving himself in presidential politics. He supports none of the three potential candidates to succeed Samaranch in 2001 who were members of the commission conducting the IOC’s internal investigation.

He figures that he offended Dick Pound, the commission’s chairman, twice as much as the others because Pound, often mentioned as presidential material, is from Montreal.

Ganga also resurrected an old charge against Pound, which has been explained to the IOC’s satisfaction but apparently not to Ganga’s.

“As a lawyer, I understand that if you have a case with bad facts you attack the law and if you have a case with bad law, you attack the facts,” Pound said. “If you’ve got a case that is bad in facts and law, you attack the prosecutor.

“But the reason those strategies are popular with lawyers is because they often work.”

Further enhancing the chances of Ganga and the others could be a surprisingly open-minded jury, especially on the charge that the inquiry commission used a double-standard to mete punishment.

It is particularly unsettling that two influential members under investigation, Kim Un Yong of South Korea and Phil Coles of Australia, apparently have escaped with warnings. Some IOC members don’t know whether they are more embarrassed by Coles’ activities or Pound’s defense of him.

If the IOC doesn’t heed the commission’s recommendations on the six expulsions, or at least most of them, it would render meaningless the reforms expected to be adopted Thursday.

Equally meaningless would be that vote of confidence for Samaranch.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].