The vice-president of the International Olympic Committee and outgoing president of the Australian National Olympic Committee, John Coates has revealed that the awarding of the 2000 Olympic Games to Sydney were ‘bought to a large extent’. Coates was vice-president of the Sydney bid, which took place seven years prior to the event back in 1993.
In a recently discovered hour-long interview in 2008, the IOC vice-president admits to offering Kenya’s IOC member Charles Mukora and Uganda’s IOC member Francis Nyangweso payment in exchange for their vote in favour of Sydney. The offer reportedly took place during a dinner event the night prior to the vote.
Coates revealed that he offered £28,000 ($35,000) to the two African National Olympic Committees, but was later cleared of any wrongdoing in 1999 with payments said to have been ‘not directly’ offered.
BBC Panorama investigated the bribes back in 2004, where Coates claimed: “There were no payments made, letters were handed over with commitments to two African NOCs.” According to a Guardian report, Coates ‘does not dispute’ that he made offers to Uganda and Kenya in the form of contingent grants and sports assistance.
These grants at the time did not break IOC ruling, however they were then banned by the committee in a rules shakeup following corruption surrounding Salt Lake City’s successful bid to host the 2002 Winter Games. Coates’ comments surrounding the offers have now come to light from an interview with Victoria University sports lecturer Bob Stewart in 2008, as part of a Sports Oral History for the National Library of Australia.
He said: “Clearly the Ugandan and Kenyan members, I think were very nervous about having to deal with me because I sat at their table at a big banquet the night before. So I just went over and said to them, ‘Look if, you know, if you vote for us and we get up, then there’s $50,000 US [a different figure to the [$20,000 lower than the figure reported] for each of your two National Olympic Committees, 10 a year for the next five years or whatever, you tell them it’s to be spent on sporting purposes.
“That subsequently, and it was quite open about it, it was all audited. But subsequently one of those members was seen to have directed the 10 into his own bank account and there was an inquiry into all of that and so it’s suggested we bought the Games. Well to a large extent we did.”
The interview also revealed that Coates had offered scholarships to the African committees, due to the huge financial support the Chinese were offering across the continent. He commented: “Obviously our government doesn’t spend money like that [China] And so we went away with a package of scholarships to the AIS and we were offering for two athletes and a coach to come. The idea was that the coach would learn something and go back and be able to pass that on to a wider group of people. We got there and we saw what was happening in the real world.
“So I took the decision to make it – ‘well there’s one scholarship we’re giving out but if we win you get it every year for seven years and we’ll run a camp in Australia for all your teams before they come here’. And we did that – we spent a fair bit of money.”
Following the claims an IOC spokesperson told the Guardian that no rules were broken at the time of the offer, whilst Coates’ legal team confirmed that the committee had cleared the Australian of any rule breaking at the time.
