With 400 days to go before the events, the Paris 2024 Games must face a major first: the offices of the organizing committee (OCOG) and other sites were searched on Tuesday in investigations by the Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), which risk tarnishing the image of JOs who want to be “exemplary”.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, these preliminary investigations relate, for one, to alleged acts of illegal taking of interests, embezzlement of public funds, favoritism and concealment of favoritism and, for the second, to alleged acts of taking unlawful interests, favoritism and concealment of favouritism. All within the framework of contracts linked to the preparation of the Olympic Games.
Contacted, the Ministry of Sports and the Olympics did not wish to react.
The public prosecutor confirmed to AFP the information from France Télévisions according to which he had ordered searches at the COJO and at other sites.
The search also concerns the Olympic Works Delivery Company (SOLIDEO), responsible for building the permanent works of the Olympic Games, and chaired by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, according to the PNF.
The first investigation, opened in 2017 and entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF), concerns a series of contracts awarded in particular by “the COJO and the GIP 2024”, the bid committee which preceded the OCOG, specified the PNF.
Opened in 2022 and entrusted to the financial brigade of the Paris judicial police, the second procedure relates, according to the PNF, to several contracts awarded by the OCOG and SOLIDEO. Its launch came after a check by the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA). According to a source familiar with the matter, this concerns “consulting contracts” on “different subjects”.
“Risks of breach of probity”
According to another source close to the matter, one of these two procedures is interested in potential conflicts of interest linked to Édouard Donnelly, executive director of operations of the OCOG, who had previously been an Olympic service provider through of his company RNK.
Mr Donnelly declined to comment, and RNK did not respond to AFP.
Asked by AFP, the OCOG and SOLIDEO indicated that they “cooperate fully with the investigators”.
The OCOG, which often highlights the fact that it is very controlled, repeated it to AFP on Tuesday, adding “without the slightest reprehensible fact being brought to its attention”. “To ensure the transparency and regularity of hundreds of markets”, he has put in place “demanding procedures” through an audit committee and an ethics committee, he recalled. The ethics committee is chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé, honorary vice-president of the Council of State.
The IOC told AFP that it had been “informed” of these searches by the OCOG.
The COJO is constituted as a non-profit association which comes under a law adopted in 1901.
In April 2021, two AFA reports, which AFP had read, pointed to “risks of breaches of probity” and “conflicts of interest”, scratching the image of the “exemplary” Olympic Games wanted by organizers.
The AFA inspectors had considered that the general procedure relating to purchases was “imprecise and incomplete”, and stressed that there were “sometimes situations of uncontrolled potential conflicts of interest”.
In their reports, they recalled the criminal proceedings against the Presidents of the Brazilian and Japanese Olympic Committees linked to the last two Summer Games (Rio in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021), and also observed that “the risks of harm to the probity are common at major sporting events.
Since the end of the Tokyo Olympics, several arrests and convictions have occurred. In May, two former officials of a corporate sponsor of the Japanese Olympics received suspended prison sentences in connection with a corruption scandal.
“It will stick to their skin”
“It’s not necessarily a surprise. There had already been two alerts, one from the AFA and the other from a former member of the OCOG, who had also been fired afterwards, ”reminds AFP David Roizen, expert in public sports policy. .
“These searches are catastrophic, they have just lost their credibility, in particular on the duty of exemplarity. […] It will stick to their skin until the Olympics, ”he analyzes.
These searches are not the only judicial pebble in the shoes of the organizers of the Paris Olympics. On Tuesday, ten workers who worked at the time without papers on the sites of the Olympic Games, assigned several construction giants, Vinci, Eiffage, Spie Batignolles and GCC, to the labor courts of Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), for obtain the “recognition” of their work and the payment of salary arrears.
