The French police searched the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics organizing committee and different places of work on Tuesday as a part of two corruption investigations over contracts signed in reference to the Games, prosecutors stated.
While the scope and nature of the investigations weren’t totally clear on Tuesday, the investigations threatened to tarnish a picture of integrity and transparency that the authorities overseeing the Paris 2024 plans had sought to undertaking, after a string of previous Olympic bids that had been riddled by corruption allegations.
The places of work of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, in Seine-Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and people of a separate physique in command of Games-related infrastructure, in western Paris, had been each searched by investigators, in line with the National Financial Prosecutor’s workplace.
The prosecutor’s workplace, which handles high-level monetary crimes and offenses, stated that the searches had been being carried out as a part of two separate investigations, each inquiries into potential conflicts of curiosity, embezzlement and favoritism.
The first, opened in 2017, is expounded to procurement contracts signed by the Paris 2024 Olympics organizing committee, which is in command of planning, organizing and financing the Games, in coordination with Paris City Hall, the International Olympic Committee, and the French sports activities authorities.
The second was opened in 2022 after an inspection that was carried out by the French Anticorruption Agency, an official authorities watchdog. It pertains to procurement contracts signed by the organizing committee and by SOLIDEO, a physique overseeing everlasting Games-related building that’s presently supervising 58 Olympic and Paralympic initiatives, in line with the corporate’s web site.
The National Financial Prosecutor’s workplace didn’t present additional particulars on the character of the contracts.
In 2021, the news company Agence France-Presse reported {that a} confidential report by the French Anticorruption Agency on the group of the 2024 video games in Paris had warned of the “risks of impropriety” and “conflicts of interest” within the course of.
Representatives for the organizing committee and for SOLIDEO confirmed the searches however didn’t present additional particulars, saying solely that they had been “fully cooperating” with investigators.
The Olympic Games will run from July 26 to Aug. 11 subsequent yr, and the Paralympic Games from Aug. 28 to Sept. 6. The video games are anticipated to attract over 10,000 athletes and hundreds of thousands of spectators, in a really completely different ambiance from the final ones, which had been held in Tokyo in 2021 beneath strict Covid associated protocols.
In January, the Cour des Comptes, France’s nationwide auditing company, estimated that the Games would price practically 9 billion euros, or $9.8 billion, up from an preliminary evaluation of 6.9 billion euros within the bidding part.
Judicial investigations can take years in France, and it was not but clear whether or not the 2 inquiries disclosed on Tuesday would finish with prices.
But Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 Olympic organizing committee, had careworn that he wished the group’s conduct to be spotless.
“There is a shared determination to make these Games an exemplary project from every point of view: in terms of budgetary rigor, transparency and the environment,” he advised Le Parisien in 2017, the yr Paris gained its bid to host the Games.
Organizers of Olympic Games in different international locations have confronted comparable investigations previously, repeatedly casting doubts on the integrity of the method.
In February, Japanese prosecutors accused Dentsu, a Japanese promoting big, and different firms of conspiring to evade the general public bidding course of main as much as the Games, as a part of a broad investigation into corruption surrounding the Tokyo Olympics.
In 2021, Carlos Arthur Nuzman, the previous longtime head of Brazil’s Olympic committee, was sentenced to greater than 30 years in jail after a decide in Brazil dominated that Rio de Janeiro’s success at securing the 2016 Summer Games was constructed on a bribery scheme. The determination got here 4 years after he was detained as a part of a joint investigation into sports activities corruption by investigators in Brazil and France.
And within the late Nineteen Nineties, a bribery scandal erupted across the course of through which Salt Lake City gained the bid for the 2002 Winter Games, with a senior Olympic official acknowledging widespread corruption and two chief organizers indicted on prices that included conspiracy to commit bribery. Those organizers had been finally acquitted by a federal decide, however the five-year scandal tainted the Games.
Source: www.nytimes.com