Less than 24 hours after arriving in Athens and we've already got ourselves a good story.
Following this week's Panorama investigation into alleged corruption within the Olympic movement, the International Olympic Committee suspended Ivan Slavkov, the Bulgarian IOC member at the centre of the alleged scandal.
We suspected a lunchtime news conference would turn up an interesting news line -- and we weren't disappointed. Mr Slavkov's suspension was announced by the IOC spokeswoman, Giselle Davies (mp3 audio file.)
A grim-faced Olympic president, Jacques Rogge, made no attempt to hide his anger at the suspension.
Four middlemen also implicated in the Panorama programme were condemned by the IOC. "They are `persona non grata' within the Olympic movement," Rogge said.
The Bulgarian Olympic Committee has criticised the timing of the Mr Slavkov's suspension but in truth the IOC had no option but to act decisively.
The IOC has been trying desperately to clean up its act following the corruption scandal over the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Mr Slavkov would have cast a long shadow over the Games if he had been allowed to come to Athens. The IOC was determined to prevent him from doing so.
posted by Stuart at 14:23
1 Comments:
Finally, maybe the IOC realise there is a major internal problem. It's just a shame that they needed a BBC television programme to find it. Surely Jacques Rogge and his colleagues have been aware of possible problems for some time, and have chosen not to deal with them until it's highlighted in the public domain.
This case will not help him as much as maybe he thinks, and it certainly does not show the IOC are "cleaning up their act".
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