The International Olympic Committee has promised to investigate startling new allegations that nine of its members – including pole vault legend Sergei Bubka and Olympic swimming champion Alexander Popov – were bribed to vote for Rio’s successful 2016 Olympics bid.
The claims were made by the former governor of Rio de Janiero Sérgio Cabral, who told a court that he had paid $2m (£1.59m) to the former president of athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, Lamine Diack, to buy votes.
Cabral said the president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee Arthur Nuzman had assured him the scheme would work because Diack had a history of such behaviour.
“I said, Nuzman, what are our guarantees here? And he said, ‘traditionally he sells four, five, six votes. There is a risk that we don’t get through to the second round.”
Cabral, who has been sentenced to almost 200 years in jail for his part in a series of corruption scandals, said Diack guaranteed up to six votes for $1.5m and then came back and offered more if he was paid an extra $500,000. Cabral said he authorised the payment. “We did it,” Cabral said.
The French authorities have already charged the former athlete Frankie Fredericks in connection with the vote-buying scheme, as part of a wide investigation into Diack and his son, Papa Massata Diack, the disgraced former marketing agent for the IAAF. Last month the Diacks were also charged with money laundering and corruption.
An IOC spokesperson said that its chief ethics and compliance officer had already began an investigation. “The IOC has turned the page with regard to good governance and in particular the procedure of the election of host cities,” he added. Diack resigned as an honorary IOC member in November 2015, a day after he was suspended following the launch of a French investigation into corruption and money-laundering. Nuzman’s IOC membership was suspended in October 2017 following his arrest in Brazil on corruption charges. He is fighting the charges.
Bubka has rejected what he calls “all the false claims” made by Cabral and claimed Diack never contacted him about his vote for the 2016 hosts. Popov said that he was “extremely surprised at the appearance of such information with the illegal use of my name” and promised to co-operate the IOC enquiry. The Diacks and Fredericks have also previously denied any wrongdoing.
Sergey Bubka
(@sergey_bubka)Mr Diack has never contacted me about my vote at the election of the host city for the Olympic Games 2016. My lawyers will write to Mr Diack to ask him to explain the allegations of Mr Cabral who wrongly claims in his testimony that Mr Diack could secure my vote.