Kim testimony doesn't worry Oly duo

Testimony from the son of a powerful International Olympic Committee member won't help the government's case against Salt Lake bid leaders Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, a member of their defense team said Friday.

John Kim, the son of South Korean IOC member Un Yong Kim, is being held in Bulgaria pending extradition on three-year-old charges connected to the bribery scandal surrounding Salt Lake City's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

There has been speculation that the government wants Kim back in the United States to testify against Welch and Johnson when their conspiracy, fraud and racketeering case goes to trial in October.

But Bill Taylor, Welch's Washington, D.C.-based attorney, said he doesn't believe that anything Kim could say would boost the government's case. "Maybe the government thinks they've got to have some great discovery out of him, but I don't see it," Taylor said.

Kim was charged with lying to federal investigators and using a fraudulently obtained green card to enter the United States. The government said Kim took a "sham job" created by a Utah businessman and paid for by the Salt Lake Bid Committee to get the green card.

"I have never felt that John Kim's testimony was very relevant to any of this," Taylor said. "I've always understood Mr. Kim to say what he did was work and, in any event, the allegations against him are entirely different than the allegations against our clients."

Welch and Johnson are accused of bribing IOC members to vote for Salt Lake City as the site of the 2002 Games with more than $1 million in cash, gifts, scholarships, medical care and other inducements.

Kim's father, Un Yong Kim, was sanctioned by his fellow IOC members in the scandal, despite his claiming not to know about his son's job. The government may try to use John Kim's arrest to force the elder Kim to testify. Un Yong Kim has not commented on the case.

Taylor's not worried about that possibility, either.

"I've never met either one of them," he said. "All I know is they are regarded as highly reputable people and are quite offended by the way they've been treated by the United States government."

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman, Bryan Sierra, said Friday the Bulgarian government has agreed to hold John Kim for three months pending a formal extradition request.

Sierra declined to comment on whether the government decided to go after him only after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated charges against Welch and Johnson in April. A federal judge in Utah had dismissed the charges in 2001.