Olympic Council Banishes Hickey

(ATR) The Irish NOC says ex-president Patrick Hickey will not return to the leadership.

Meeting in Dublin Wednesday night, the Board of Directors of the Olympic Council of Ireland took giant steps away from the legacy of former president Patrick Hickey. The board voted unanimously not to accept Hickey's return, regardless of the outcome of judicial proceedings in Brazil and an IOC Ethics Commission inquiry.

Hickey, OCI President for 20 years and an IOC member since 1995, was arrested in Rio de Janeiro in August 2016, just days before the end of the Rio Olympics. Arrested at dawn in his room at the IOC hotel, Hickey was imprisoned and charged with violating Brazilian law regarding the sale of tickets to the Olympics.

Last December after posting a $400,000 bond, Hickey was allowed to return to Ireland. He still awaits trial in Rio de Janeiro, no date certain for the case. Hickey has said that he has done nothing wrong.

Immediately after his arrest Hickey self suspended his OCI presidency as well as his seat on the IOC. Since then the OCI has elected a new president, Sarah Keane, who took the opportunity at this board meeting to make a break with the Council and its longtime former president.

The board voted to accept all the findings of a report issued earlier this month which called into question the practices used by the OCI under Hickey to market Olympic tickets allocated to the OCI.

The board says it agrees with the report about "the absence of a full reconciliation of tickets and ticket revenue" received by the OCI and has asked auditing firm Grant Thornton to complete a review by the end of September.

In the wake of a decision by the organizing committee of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics to terminate THG, the OCI AuthorizedTicket Reseller, the board voted to handle all ticketing within house for the upcoming Games. Approval from South Korea will still be needed.

THG has been the largest generator of revenue in recent years for the OCI. But the firm had a close relationship with Hickey who negotiated the business arrangement for the Council. There is believed to be a strong desire to part ways with THG, but the company has a contract that extends beyond the Tokyo Olympics.

More to come on this obviously by this statement from the OCI:

"On foot of legal advice the Board cannot comment on the decisions it made this evening with regard to ticketing arrangements for Tokyo 2020 and beyond."

Amidst the controversy wrought by the Hickey scandal, the Irish government has suspended its state funding of the OCI. The board says it will ask minister Shane Ross to return the flow of money so that athlete training and games preparation will not be interrupted.

Somewhat ominously, the board noted that Hickey, who was never mentioned by name in tonight’s statement, was under investigation by the IOC ethics panel.

"Tonight the Board agreed to fully cooperate with that investigation and to share and provide requested information and documentation to the Commission, including the Moran Report. We expect that this process may take some time to reach a conclusion. Nonetheless the Board tonight unanimously agreed that it would not accept the return of the former President to the OCI Board."

The OCI statement concluded with a burst of optimism that the travails of the past year may lead to better times for the Council.

"The Board is eager to move forward, to take the learnings from the past and to focus its time and energy on implementing its reform agenda and concentrating on athletes, their families, coaches, and member federations to ensure that it delivers for them in their pursuit of the Olympic dream and ideals."

Reported by Ed Hula.