(ATR) Famed sprinter and IOC member in Namibia Frank Fredericks denies that money he received the day the IOC voted to send the 2016 Olympics to Rio de Janeiro was a bribe for his vote.
In reply to questions posed by the Paris newspaper Le Monde, Fredericks says a payment of $299,300 he received from a business controlled by the son of disgraced ex-IAAF President Lamine Diack was for services Fredericks rendered in Namibia to develop youth programs for athletics.
"Payment was in respect of services rendered in the period 2007 to 2011. The payment has nothing whatsoever to do with the Olympic games. By the way, I was not an IAAF board member at the time, but an IAAF ambassador, and did not breach any regulation or rule of ethics," Fredericks tells Le Monde.
The response of Fredericks follows a report by the newspaper that a corruption investigation by French police into the dealings of Diack and son Papa Masata Diack has uncovered the transaction to a company registered to Fredericks in the Seychelles Islands.
A statement from IOC spokesman Mark Adams acknowledges the inquiry involving the IOC member.
"The IOC trusts that Mr. Fredericks will bring all the elements to prove his innocence against these allegations made by Le Monde," says Adams.
"Immediately after a link was made between this contractual payment and the vote for the host city of the Olympic Games 2016, Mr. Fredericks himself also turned to the IOC Ethics Commission which is now following up on all the allegations in order to fully clarify this matter."
"The IOC will be contacting the French Judicial authorities again in order to receive information on which the article in Le Monde appears to be based," Adams said.
Fredericks currently serves as head of the Evaluation Commission in charge of assessing the two remaining bid cities for the 2024 Olympics. His role on the commission could be in question as long as he is subject to inquiry by French investigators and as long as Paris is a candidate for the 2024 Olympics. Fredericks is due to lead the IOC Commission on a visit to Paris in May. The group travels to Los Angeles in May. He has been an IOC member since 2004.
The suspicions raised in the Le Monde reporting are the first to link the corruption investigation of the Diacks to the Rio 2016 Olympic bid.
Le Monde reports that investigators believe Rio businessman Arthur Cesar de Menezes Soares Filho payed $1.5 million to a marketing company associated with Papa Massata Diack, three days ahead of the 2016 Olympic vote in September 2009.
Lamine Diack was president of the International Association of Athletics Federations president at the time and an IOC member. He retired from the IOC in 2013 at age 80. Granted honorary member status, Diack resigned months later just as the IOC Ethics Commission was ready to possibly seek his expulsion from that honorary membership.
Diack and son have both been banned for life from the IAAF, which Diack led for 15 years, all in connection with charges the Diacks orchestrated a bribery scheme to keep secret positive drug tests of Russian track and field athletes.
Soares is a wealthy businessman known in Rio de Janeiro for the multitude of his subcontract dealings with now-jailed former Governor Sergio Cabral. Cabral was instrumental in bringing the Olympics to Rio de Janeiro and served as Governor of the state of Rio until he was forced to resign in 2014. He is currently in Rio’s Bangu prison awaiting trial on corruption charges stemming from contracts to renovate the Maracana.
Rio 2016 head of communications Mario Andrada told Around the Ringsthat the bid committee has had "no connections whatsoever," with Soares, and maintained the organizing committee's fair victory in Copenhagen.
"We won by a large margin it was a clean election above all," Andrada said. "We’ve never been approached by the French investigators but the information on Rio 2016 bid is open not only to the French authorities, but to the Brazilian people and to everybody."
Homepage Photo: Getty Images
Written by Ed Hula and Aaron Bauer
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