A report from the Nagano Prefecture Investigation Group shows that Nagano’s bid committee for the 1998 Winter Olympic Games lavished millions of dollars on International Olympic Committee (IOC) delegates to win the 1998 Games.
The report was ordered by the region’s governor and criticized Nagano for providing an “illegitimate and excessive level of hospitality” to members of the IOC.
According to USA Today many Olympic insiders said Salt Lake City deserved to win that bid, but couldn’t match Nagano’s “gift-giving”. Nagano beat Salt Lake in the race for the 1998 Games in a close IOC vote.
Nagano boosters reportedly left video cameras in hotel rooms for IOC members on the eve of the vote for the 1998 Games while Salt Lake left disposable cameras.
The Deseret News reports that Nagano bidders also lavished members with everything from geishas to ceremonial swords, to expensive electronics. They burned their records after being awarded the 1998 Games in 1991.
The report shows Nagano spent $4.4 million just to entertain the IOC, an average of about $46,500 per member. They were also given an average of about $5,700 each in gifts when the official limit was $200. The report identified a $13,000 ceremonial sword offered to then IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch.
Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, who led an investigation of the Salt Lake scandal when two top leaders of the bid committee were indicted on bribery charges later thrown out, said, “that sounds high to me. But then some of my colleagues are higher maintenance than I am”.
The report put Nagano’s total bid expenses at $24 million, more than twice what Salt Lake spent on two bid campaigns.
Former Salt Lake bid leader Tom Welch, who was indicted in the Salt Lake bribery scandal along with Dave Johnson, told the Deseret news Monday he isn’t surprised by the report. He said, “the Nagano report only validates that which was common knowledge about the bid process.
“We were never in a position as a bid that we were able to do the entertainment or give the gifts or spend the dollars that the Naganos of the world were able to do. We were never able to compete on that type of level”.
Welch said he had no hard feelings about the new Nagano report finally confirming what was described in its pages as an “illegitimate and excessive level of hospitality” in another bid city so many years later.
He said, “bidding cities were the bottom of the food chain that supports the Olympic movement. It was the process. If you were going to be successful, you had to learn what that process was…we didn’t believe we were doing anything wrong”.
The report ordered by Nagano Governor Yasuo Tanaka in February 2004 has stirred little interest in Japan said Tatsuya Iwase, a journalist and a member of the investigative board.
