Admission comes as a surprise in Olympic bribe trial

Between $15,000 and $18,000 of the cash collected from an Olympic sponsor during Salt Lake City's bid for the 2002 Winter Games went to Dave Johnson, his attorney said Friday.

The surprise admission from attorney Max Wheeler came during his opening statement in the government's fraud, conspiracy and racketeering case against Johnson and Tom Welch.

It's the first time there's been an acknowledgment that either bid leader also received money while showering more than $1 million in cash and gifts on members of the International Olympic Committee in wooing the Winter Games to Utah.

Even the lead federal prosecutor on the case said he was surprised by the revelation. "We didn't know that before. Now we do," prosecutor Richard Wiedis said as he left the federal courthouse on Main Street.

There was little new otherwise in the hourlong opening statements made to the jury Friday first by the government, then by Welch's attorney, Bill Taylor, and finally, by Wheeler.

The defense attorneys spent much of their time in front of the jury Friday promising to prove that their clients didn't commit any crimes but did what they had to do to bring the Olympics to Utah. The IOC, they said, expected the lavish treatment.

They offered a long list of Utahns who participated in the process, including former Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini, Gov. Mike Leavitt, Sen. Orrin Hatch, banker Spence Eccles, and even companies like ZCMI and Delta Air Lines.

"This was not a two-man operation," Taylor said. "It was a team."

Prosecutors, however, said Welch and Johnson chose to wage "a sophisticated campaign of bribery" on their own, deceiving the people put in positions of oversight at the bid committee and forcing employees to go along.

Prosecutors provided a chart of largess extended to IOC members, including "the jackpot of $322,000" in cash, gifts, medical treatments, trips and a Rolex watch given to Jean-Claude Ganga of the Congo Republic, who was ousted from the IOC after the scandal surfaced.

One of the methods the defendants allegedly used to further the effort, federal prosecutor John Scott said, was collecting four separate cash payments totaling $130,000 from Sead Dizdarevic, owner of Jet Set Sports, a longtime Olympic sponsor.

The contributions from the company are key to the government's attempt to prove the defendants chose to, in Scott's words, "cook the books and just plain lie" to keep the bribery secret.