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Atlanta Olympic organisers respond to probe

From an 800 dollars bulldog to a 10,000 dollars bus, Atlanta Olympic organisers yesterday released details of how they spent their money to win the 1996 Summer Games.

While many of the inducements appeared to violate International Olympic Committee rules, organisers said they were not in the same league as the 1.2 million dollars scheme in Salt Lake City that led to the biggest scandal in Olympic history. Excess gifts and questionable donations totaled less than 94,000 dollars.

But in Washington, a Congressional panel that requested the Atlanta report said it wanted to know more, and planned to delve deeper.

"We're anxious to see the lay of the land,'' said rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Commerce sub-committee that is running the inquiry. He said investigators would arrive in Atlanta as soon as today.

The commerce committee already has been investigating the Salt Lake scandal, which included allegations of free scholarships, medical care and job offers for IOC members and their families. The Congressional investigators decided to examine Atlanta's bid for any abuse of the system and potential fraud.

"This is not a witch hunt,'' Upton said. Hopefully Atlanta will wind up pretty clean.''

The report, the first detailed look at Atlanta's bid finances, did not contain any bombshell revelations, and some of the potential rules violations involved IOC members already expelled or censured in various Salt Lake city investigations.

Billy Payne, who headed the Atlanta Olympic organisation, said the report established ... "that we've acted with integrity and honesty.''

Still, Payne refused to release the documents behind the report.

1,400 boxes of documents at the center of a legal battle between his organisation on one hand and the Georgia attorney general and the Atlanta journal-constitution on the other.

Payne says the papers are private property of a private organisation. The attorney general and the newspaper say the Olympics were a public event and its records should be opened.

Released by the Georgia Amateur Athletic Foundation, the report outlines how most of the 7 million dollars raised for the 1996 bid was spent, including an accounting of IOC travel, receptions for IOC members and individual and group gifts.

The report shows the biggest beneficiary was the republic of Congo. At the request of Jean-Claude Ganga, one of six IOC members expelled after the Salt Lake scandal, the African country received more than 30,000 dollars in sports equipment and infrastructure in 1990 from Atlanta bidders and their associates. Bidders also spent nearly 15,000 dollars for two teen-age tennis players from the Congo to attend an exclusive Florida tennis camp two months before Atlanta won the vote.

Atlanta bidders also violated the IOC's 200 dollars limit on individual gifts 38 times for a total of 15,165.88 dollars, the report showed. Four gifts exceeded 500 dollars, including a bulldog (875 dollars) and a carburetor kit (948 dollars).

Another donation included a 25,000 dollars gift to the South African Non-racial Olympic Committee, an anti-apartheid organisation seeking to get South Africa back into the Olympics. And the Atlanta group sent a used bus costing 10,310 dollars to a children's programme in Lima, Peru. It was reimbursed for the vehicle.

Total donations came to 78,703.40 dollars, and the report said there was no evidence of direct or indirect cash payments to IOC members.

The report shows six IOC members brought two or more companions on trips to Atlanta that were financed by local bidders. IOC rules limit members to one companion on such trips.

In several instances, IOC members showed up with children or other family members, Payne said, "and it was just southern hospitality. It wasn't like we were going to turn them away.''

The report did not break out excess travel costs.

AP