Sydney prays for clean chit, for sponsors’ sake

“It worked within the rules and worked competently in an extraordinarily competitive environment,” Gosper said. But it is clear Sydney pushed the IOC rules to the limit.

Sydney’s Olympics Minister Michael Knight has warned he will refer any evidence of misconduct to the local independent commission against corruption or police for investigation.

The dilemma facing Sydney Olympic organisers is that very few people know what is in the 3,000 documents which have been kept secret since 1991, when the city decided to bid.

On June19, 1991, Sydney Olympics 2000 Bid Limited was formed, but its documents deemed confidential. Only its annual financial report and memorandum of association rules, lodged with the Australian Securities Commission, were publicly available.

In 1993, the bid company was wound up and its documents handed to the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Socog). But Socog has refused to release the documents, despite media attempts to gain access via freedom of information laws.

According to the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) president, John Coates, the master behind the bid, Sydney had a budget of A$28 million ($17.5 million) to win the Games.

Details of how the money was spent remain a secret, but IOC delegates were wined and dined in the city’s luxury hotels and restaurants, with side trips to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The IOC has a $150 limit on bid-city gifts to delegates. But according to bid company documents, obtained by Reuters, after a visit by a Mongolian IOC delegate, Sydneycontributed A$20,000 to the cost of shipping seven rare takhi ponies, Mongolia’s National symbol, from an Australian zoo to Mongolia. Sports scholarships and financial assistance were also offered to National Olympic organisations for their vote.

Coates has said he arranged sports funding totalling $1.2 million for 11 African countries. On the eve of the 1993 vote in Monte Carlo, Coates dined with Kenyan and Ugandan IOC delegates and promised to pay their National Olympic Committees $35,000 each to sponsor sports projects if Sydney won. Sydney beat Beijing by two votes.

The IOC cleared Coates of any wrongdoing, but the secret nature of the bid, and Coates’ control, has raised eyebrows.

Sydney is also facing a A$200 million sponsorship shortfall and the current IOC bribery scandal has not made it easy to convince new firms to back the Sydney Games.