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Swedish luxury sedans, Japanese geishas, posh Parisian apartments, expensive
furs -- no one ever accused International Olympic Committee members of having
pedestrian tastes. Early this year, Sports Illustrated reported that these and
other gifts, along with good old-fashioned greenbacks, had been used by
officials in various would-be Olympic host cities, to bribe and cajole IOC
members into voting for them. The Salt Lake City organizing committee, host of
the 2002 Winter Games, was exposed last year as perhaps the most egregious
offender, wooing 14 IOC members with an estimated $400,000 in
"inappropriate material benefits" such as free housing, scholarships
and jobs. Said Mahmoud El-Farnawani, an Egyptian who was paid $161,000 by the
Salt Lake Organizing Committee to secure the votes of North African IOC members,
"This is a kind of war, and you have all the weapons you can to win. I was
just one
weapon."
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