In deal-making parlance, it's called a quid pro quo. According to Wikipedia, the term "indicates a more or less equal exchange or substitution of goods or services." In legal usage, quid pro quo "indicates that an item or a service has been traded in return for something of value, usually when the propriety or equity of the transaction is in question."
A representative of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) this week said that while the organization has not launched a formal investigation into the possible impropriety of a deal purportedly made by VANOC's John Furlong and the mayor of Moscow, Russia, in June 2003, it has asked Furlong to explain references he made to such a deal in his new book Patriot Hearts.
In response to questions about the supposed deal, Furlong said he and his team were "entirely scrupulous and ethical" in all their dealings with the IOC during the bid process. And we're willing to reserve judgment until the IOC looks into the matter and all the facts are on the table.
But based only on what Furlong has written, it doesn't look good. In his book, he wrote that there was a meeting with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the head of Moscow's team that was bidding for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Furlong said he viewed Russia's support for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games bid as crucial to its success. During the meeting, he and Storey offered to stage a formal workshop with Russian officials of the 2010 Summer Games bid in return for a support from Russian IOC members for the Vancouver bid in the vote that occurred on July 2, 2003.
Wrote Furlong, "We kept our word and staged a formal workshop for the Moscow 2012 team. We got Russia's crucial support in return."
To us, that sounds like a quid pro quo - tit for tat, one hand washes the other. In the final vote, Vancouver's bid beat out Pyeongchang, Korea's, by 56 to 53. Russia had three IOC members at the time - Vitaly Smimov, Shamil Tarpischev and Alexander Popov. If Luzhkov actually had the pull to sway their votes, and did, it seems clear that an ethics violation occurred.
Until now, Canada's Games appeared to have been won and executed with 100 per cent integrity. Until now, we believed that those who celebrated IOC President Jacques Rogge's announcement in Whistler's Village Square, Vancouver's GM Place and elsewhere were celebrating the fair-and-square, final-ballot vote by IOC members.
It's well known that corruption and influence peddling have been rampant in the process of bidding for the Games in the past. As a Canadian, this writer wants to believe that the Games that took place in our midst a year ago were untainted by those sorts of scandals, and sincerely hopes there's more information to emerge that will prove the deal wasn't what it appears to be.
- David Burke
