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12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
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| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
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| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
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| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
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6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
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2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
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4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
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| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
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| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
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| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
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Welch, Johnson are indicted
Deseret News Archives - July 20, 2000
Olympic bid leaders Tom Welch and Dave Johnson were indicted Thursday in U.S. District Court on felony counts involving what they did to bring the 2002 Olympic Winter Games to Salt Lake City.
The indictment listed conspiracy, aiding and abetting, mail, wire and honest services fraud, and violations of the Travel Act. A grand jury handed up a 15-count indictment.
The indictment alleges the conspiracy took place between February 1988 and July 1999 and among other things involved Welch and Johnson recruiting Alfredo LaMont, who was then the USOC director of international relations, to "secretly assist" the bid committee in defeating other U.S. cities in obtaining USOC support to be the host city of the Olympic Winter Games.
The three counts related to violations of the Travel Act detail "overt acts " intended to influence current and former IOC members Sergio Santander-Fantini, Guirandou N'Daiye, Anton Geesink, David Sibandze, Lamine Keita, Pirjo Haggman, Slobodon Filopobic, Austin Sealy, Augustin Arroyo, Rene Essomba, Un Yong Kim, Zein Gadir, Charles Mukora, Bashir Attarabulsi, and Jean Claude Ganga.
Richard Wiedis, the lead prosecutor on the case, had no comment for reporters as he left the courthouse Thursday.
According to the indictment, the two bid leaders:
Secretly paid an official of the U.S. Olympic Committee to assist the Salt Lake Bid Committee in being chosen by the USOC as its candidate city.
Personally diverted $130,000 in bid committee income.
Offered and paid $1 million to influence the votes of more than a dozen International Olympic Committee members.
Prepared and executed a series of bogus contracts.
Falsified bid committee and organizing committee books, records and other publicly available documents to conceal their activities.
Indictments will move the 19-month-long investigation into allegations of vote-buying in the bid campaign closer to the courtroom, something the Salt Lake Organizing Committee as well as Utah's government officials and community leaders had hoped to avoid.
Not only would a trial likely cause further damage to the still financially struggling Games, it could also result in many prominent Utahns being forced to testify about whether they knew what was going on.
Welch and Johnson have said they'd welcome the opportunity to prove wrong a report by the SLOC Board of Ethics that found only they were responsible for the more than $1 million in cash and gifts handed out to members of the International Olympic Committee.
Last week, the pair turned down a proposed deal that would have required them to plead guilty to a single felony charge involving a conspiracy to impede the work of the Internal Revenue Service.
The charge carried a sentence that could have been satisfied by home confinement rather than prison time, accord-ing to Johnson's attorney, Max Wheeler. Fines associated with the charge were not discussed during the brief negotiations.
The indictment explains what federal prosecutors believe Welch and Johnson did with some $130,000 in cash received from an exclusive Olympic travel agency that is now a Salt Lake Organizing Committee sponsor.
Jet Set Sports, a New Jersey-based company headed by Sead Dizdarevic, acknowledged late Wednesday in a prepared statement that contributions were made to the bid committee and were disclosed to federal investigators.
"In order to assist a United States bid city and at the request of bid committee officials, Jet Set made contributions to the Salt Lake Bid Committee," the statement from corporate counsel Robert Boyar read.
"Mr. Dizdarevic has fully disclosed and explained these contributions to the Department of Justice investigators and is cooperating with the ongoing investigation. No further comment is appropriate at this time."
Welch's attorney, William Taylor, based in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday that Dizdarevic did not want a record of the contributions. The cash payments were made between August 1994 and May 1995.
"Everybody was concerned that they needed to raise as much money as they could, including Tom and Dave. When this guy offered to make a contribution, they were glad to have it," Taylor said.
Even though the funds never showed up in bid committee records, Taylor said it was used only for authorized purposes, including reimbursing IOC members for their expenses.
"They were certainly used in ways Tom and Dave thought were necessary to get the bid. That's what this case is all about," Taylor said. The bid committee "had one objective, to get the Games. That explains almost all the behavior that everybody was engaged in."
Asked if Welch and Johnson would be able to produce their own accounting of how the money from Jet Set Sports was spent, Taylor said, "Stick around. All this will come out at trial."
The company was signed earlier this year as a sponsor of the 2002 Winter Games in a deal worth some $20 million to SLOC. Since the 1984 Summer Games in Dizdarevic's native Sarajevo, the company has provided hotels and other hospitality needs for corporate clients.
For the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, Jet Set Sports has already sold out a $135,000 travel package that includes a car and driver provided through the Sydney organizing committee as well as special access to events.
The company is the first Games sponsor known to have cooperated in the investigation.
Two of the three people previously charged in the case have also agreed to cooperate as part of their plea agreements: local businessman David Simmons and former U.S. Olympic Committee official Alfredo LaMont.
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