Tag Archives: International Olympic Committee

Guest Post: The Beijing Olympics Marks the End of the Era of Corrupt Authoritarian Megasports—But What Comes Next?

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Today’s guest post is from Andy Spalding, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and the Chair of the Olympics Compliance Task Force.

The present Beijing Winter Olympics are widely seen as yet another chapter in what has become all-too-familiar story of governance disasters in megasport events like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup: 2008, China; 2010, South Africa; 2014, Brazil; and Russia; 2016, Brazil . . . again; 2018, Russia . . . again. And now, China . . . again. But for the last decade, pressure has been building for change in how the organizers of these megasport events approach anticorruption and human rights policy. And at last, change has come—even if it’s not yet obvious to casual observers only looking at the current games.

The period between roughly 2014 and 2018 became a tipping point in megasport anti-corruption and human rights policy. Russia consecutively hosted the Sochi Winter Olympics and FIFA Men’s World Cup with dizzying human rights and corruption problems. Meanwhile, the only two bidders for the 2022 Winter Olympics were China and Kazakhstan. Something had to change. Continue reading →

If the International Community Takes Corruption in Sports Seriously, Russia Should Be Banned from the 2020 Olympics

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Corruption in sports has been recognized as a serious and systemic problem (see here and here). One of the most egregious examples of sports-related corruption is Russia’s state-sponsored doping program. A 2015 report issued by an independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency found that this program involved athletes, coaches, trainers, doctors, and Russian institutions. Some of the most serious allegations were that members of the Russian secret service (the FSB) had pressured lab workers to cover up positive drug testing results (with one lab destroying more than 1,400 samples), top Russian sports officials submitting fake urine samples, and athletes assuming false identities, paying for destruction of positive doping results, and bribing anti-doping authorities. The former director of Russia’s anti-doping lab, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, has provided additional explanations as to how he and others, including FSB agents, enabled doping for the country’s athletes.

In light of these revelations, WADA recommended that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ban Russia in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics; however the IOC permitted each sport to consider individual athletes for participation. After an additional 2016 investigation known as the McLaren report produced additional evidence regarding Russian violations, the IOC did ban Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics, and banned several individual athletes for life, but the IOC permitted 168 Russians to compete neutrally as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” WADA reinstated Russia’s Anti-Doping Agency as compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code in September 2018, subject to two conditions: (1) Russian anti-doping authorities must accept the McLaren report findings; and (2) Russia must make data in its Moscow laboratory available to WADA inspection.

Yet Russia has not learned its lesson:

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Revisiting the “Public International Organization” Designation for International Sports Organizations under the FCPA

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Three years have passed since U.S. federal prosecutors rocked the global sports community by indicting roughly 40 individuals in connection with an investigation into corruption at FIFA. Some preliminary commentary suggested that prosecutors in the FIFA case might bring charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). U.S. prosecutors instead pursued cases under money laundering, racketeering, and fraud charges against the individuals—primarily officials at FIFA and other soccer organizations—who accepted the bribes. In December 2017, for example, prosecutors obtained their first convictions from jury trials in this case, as Juan Ángel Napout (former president of South American football’s governing body) and José Maria Marin (the former president of Brazil’s football federation) were found guilty of racketeering, money laundering, and fraud for accepting large sums of money in exchange for lucrative FIFA media rights deals and influence over FIFA tournament hosting decisions.

The reason that the DOJ has only targeted bribe-taking FIFA officials, and has not used the FCPA to prosecute those who paid those bribes, is that bribes paid to FIFA officials fall outside the FCPA’s scope. But that could, and perhaps should, change.

The 1998 amendments to the FCPA expanded the statute’s scope to cover bribes not just to officials of foreign governments, but to officials of “public international organizations.” An organization may be designated as a public international organization either through an executive order pursuant to an existing statute (the International Organizational Immunities Act), or—importantly for present purposes—“any other international organization that is designated by the President by Executive order[.]” Pursuant to this statutory authority, the President has the power to designate international sports governing bodies like FIFA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and others as “public international organizations” for FCPA purposes. (The fact that these sports bodies are nominally private does not prevent this; while most of the roughly 80 public international organizations currently covered by the FCPA are intergovernmental organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the list also includes some private, non-profit organizations, such as the International Fertilizer Development Center.) If the President designated international sports organizations like FIFA or the IOC as “public international organizations” for FCPA purposes, then individuals or firms that bribed officials at those organizations could be prosecuted under the FCPA, so long as the U.S. has jurisdiction over the defendants.

This is not a novel or radical idea. For decades, legislators and activists have clamored for designating sports organizations such as FIFA and the IOC as public international organizations under the FCPA. The discussion first surfaced in 1999, when U.S. Senator George Mitchell requested President Clinton to declare the IOC a public international organization following findings of a bribery-ridden culture in the Olympic movement. Senator John McCain later introduced a bill that would bring the IOC under the definition of public international organization under the FCPA, but the bill never made it out of committee. Although these past efforts proved unsuccessful, the time is ripe for revisiting this idea. Indeed, there are at least two compelling arguments for designating FIFA and the IOC as public international organizations under the FCPA.

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Guest Post: The IOC Is Lagging Behind In Fighting Corruption in Sports Mega Events

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Professor Thomas Kruessman, of the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia, contributes today’s guest post:

Recently Jimmy McEntee criticized the anticorruption provisions that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had added into its standard Host Country Contract (HCC), arguing that the revised HCC language fails to represent genuine progress in fighting Olympic corruption. I might quibble with a few of his arguments, but McEntee’s larger point is essentially correct. For example, while I think McEntee erred as a technical legal matter in asserting that the HCC contains no legal enforcement mechanism, he’s right that as a practical matter, the IOC may not be able to credibly threaten to enforce the anticorruption provisions against a host city, or host National Olympic Committee (NOC) that violates them. Although the IOC is entitled to terminate the HCC and to withdraw the Games from the Host City if there is a violation of or failure to perform “any material obligation pursuant to the HCC or under any applicable law,” this threat is not very credible, given the high stakes involved for the IOC, the demanding timeline on which Olympic Games are prepared, and the fact that termination may invite burdensome and uncertain litigation over what counts as a “material obligation.” For similar reasons, the less extreme remedy of retaining or withholding funds from the host city or NOC or Host National Olympic Committee (NOC) is also not very appealing, and therefore not very credible, in light of the IOC’s strong interest in making the Olympic Games a success and the fact that withholding funds which would weaken the local hosts.

But perhaps McEntee’s most important point—and the one I want to explore further here—is his argument that the HCC’s anticorruption languate is excessively vague. He argues that “a meaningful anticorruption provision – one consistent with best practices for such provisions – would need to include language that requires the host city to ensure that its agents, contractors, suppliers, and consultants do not participate in any corrupt practice” (emphasis in the original). It is here, especially with respect to the failure to deal clearly and adequately with third-party corruption, where the revised HCC lags behind most, and where comparison with another international sporting association’s approach to the same issue—the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Tournament Requirements for the EURO 2024 tournament—is most enlightening. Continue reading →

The Interational Olympic Committee’s Revised Host City Contract: Another Failed Attempt at Preventing Corruption

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Recent Olympic Games, including the 2014 Sochi Winter Games and the 2016 Rio Summer Games, have been dogged by corruption scandals (see here and here). The Sochi Games were particularly egregious: Russian politician Boris Nemtsov believes that the total scale of the embezzlement accounts for 50-60% of the stated final cost of the Russian Olympics. One example cited was the main 40,000-seat Fisht Olympic Stadium, which was first projected to cost about $49 million. Anticorruption activist Alexy Navalny estimates that the real final cost could well exceed $520 million and may total more than $700 million, many times the fair value. This has led to some very bad publicity for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which organizes the Games. In response to these and other concerns, this past February the IOC made changes to its Host City Contract, which sets out the requirements that cities must meet in order to host the Olympic Games. For the first time, the IOC included specific anticorruption standards and human rights requirements, which were noticeably absent from all previous versions.

The revised provision in the contract states that [the host city must] “refrain from any act involving fraud or corruption, in a manner consistent with any international agreements, laws and regulations applicable in the Host Country and all internationally-recognized anti-corruption standards applicable in the Host Country, including by establishing and maintaining effective reporting and compliance.” The IOC’s revised language integrated a number of recommendations from organizations such as Transparency International, Amnesty International, and the Sport and Rights Alliance. IOC President Thomas Bach explained that the IOC adopted the changes because “[t]ransparency, good governance and accountability are key elements of Olympic Agenda.”

However, both the substance of the terms and lack of enforcement mechanisms mean this provision does absolutely nothing in fighting corruption. The change is little more than a public relations stunt by the IOC to improve its image following numerous criticisms from recent games. Rather than applauding Bach for placing words in a contract, anticorruption activists should continue to push for meaningful change at the Olympic Games. The revised contract fails to represent genuine progress on fighting Olympic corruption for three reasons:

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Sports Anticorruption Initiatives: Hail Mary or a Home Run?

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Corruption in sports—whether it be match-fixing, the systematic use of performance enhancing drugs, or bribes paid to secure lucrative hosting duties—is by no means a new phenomenon. However, as Transparency International recently noted, this type of corruption has, since at least 2010, been gaining increasing prominence both among anticorruption advocates and the broader international community. Perhaps the most striking example of this trend is the considerable coverage that the various scandals emanating from FIFA’s selection of the World Cup’s host countries has engendered over the past few years (including Melanie’s posts on this blog here and here). Yet the issue is much broader. Last year, for example, a “landmark study” revealed that criminal gangs launder more than £80 billion in the UK from illegal sports betting, and commentators have decried the “dramatic growth in reports of corruption” in sport more broadly.

In response to these increasing concerns regarding corruption in sport, a number of different initiatives have sprung up: The International Olympic Committee has created a “hotline for whistleblowers to report match-fixing and other corruption,” China recently announced that it would be cracking down on the “sport for millionaires” – golf – as part of its broader anticorruption efforts, and last month Transparency International unveiled its Corruption in Sport Initiative, which is focused on “[k]eeping sports clean.”

While it is too early to evaluate the efficacy of some of these programs, it nonetheless may well be worth taking a step back to consider the broader question of whether or not corruption in sports should be a priority for the anticorruption community. Continue reading →