Olympics boss: No resignations planned in probe

SAINT-DENIS, France — What was shaping up as an everyday workday turned out to be something however for the organizers of France’s first summer Olympic Games in a century.

French anti-corruption police raided their bustling Olympic headquarters on the outskirts of Parisarriving unannounced and accompanied by a Justice of the Peace from a French monetary crimes prosecution unit that has made a behavior of going after sports’ rogues.

This time, they have been zeroing in on twenty or so of the numerous lots of of enterprise contracts that Olympic organizers have signed as they race to organize the French capital for 10,500 athletes and hundreds of thousands of spectators subsequent yr. The investigators have been looking for paperwork and data as they dig into suspicions of favoritism, conflicts of curiosity, and misuse of a few of the billions of euros ({dollars}) being sunk into the Paris Video games that open July 26, 2024.

Tony Estanguet, a former Olympic canoeing star with gold medals from the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Video games, was at work within the Olympic HQ when police got here knocking final week. The trim 45-year-old is the face and chief organizer of the Paris Video games, presiding over a quickly rising workforce whose preparations have been progressing largely easily earlier than investigators arrived with a choose’s warrant.

“It is the primary time this has occurred to us, so we have been shocked,” Estanguet says. “We stated, ‘Sure, after all, take all the data you want.'”

“I’m cooperating. There’ll absolutely be different levels. We’ll absolutely must reply to extra questions. There will likely be extra checks proper as much as the tip, maybe even after the Video games,” he acknowledges. “So I’m prepared for that and I do know that it’s a part of this sort of journey. We’ll be inspected intensely, criticized massively.”

In a wide-ranging interview with The Related Press, the Paris 2024 president vigorously defended colleagues whose properties additionally have been searched. The 2 senior organizing committee executives for now face no allegations and are being checked out as a result of they have been concerned in enterprise choices, Estanguet says. “There is not any query of envisaging” their resignation “for the second,” he provides.

Estanguet insists that the 2 monetary probes of Paris Video games contract awards bear no comparability with corruption and ethics scandals which have for many years dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning eventtogether with the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and Rio de Janeiro’s bribery-plagued Video games of 2016.

“It is unfair to say that we’re just like the others,” he says. “Sadly, issues went off target prior to now and I believe we’re all being lumped collectively a bit, though I can inform you that we’re being very cautious and everybody right here must be very cautious as a result of there isn’t any room for error.”

Within the hourlong AP interview, Estanguet additionally addressed different points essential to the success of the primary Olympics to host spectators once more after the COVID-19 pandemic:

• Safety preparations for the groundbreaking opening ceremony on July 26 will flip Paris into “the most secure place on the earth,” he boldly predicts. As a substitute of a conventional stadium ceremony, Paris intends to showcase its iconic monuments with a waterborne extravaganza on a 6-kilometer (3½-mile) stretch of the cleaned-up River Seine. Tons of of 1000’s of spectators will principally watch totally free within the coronary heart of the French capital, the place Islamic extremists attacked twice in 2015killing 147 individuals, together with outdoors the nationwide stadium.

“If you wish to be protected, come to Paris for the opening ceremony,” Estanguet says.

• With only a yr to go, Paris nonetheless has loads of unfinished work, and that is advantageous, he says. “There are many issues that are not prepared. However that is regular. I was a top-level athlete. It is by no means good to be prepared a yr beforehand … It’s a must to be prepared on gameday and arrive with the sensation that you just’re not fairly prepared. That manner you battle, cling on, give every thing to essentially be at your greatest,” he says.

The probes led by France’s monetary prosecution service — the primary opened in 2017, the second in 2022 — threaten to hold over organizers throughout the July-August Olympics and the Paralympic Video games that observe into September. Investigators anticipate to spend months sifting by paperwork recovered of their searches of the Paris 2024 workplaces, the properties of Etienne Thobois, its director basic, and Edouard Donnelly, govt director of operations. In addition they searched the HQ of the corporate delivering Olympic infrastructure, Solideo, and houses of a few of its employees, based on a judicial official with information of the investigations who wasn’t approved to debate them publicly.

The official stated the Paris court docket that might hear any case, if the prosecutors’ probes get that far, additionally has no room on its calendar to carry a trial earlier than September 2024.

Investigators don’t suspect that bribes have been paid or obtained, drawing a pointy distinction with the corruption probes that ensnared Tokyo and Riothe official stated. As a substitute, two police items that battle monetary criminality are investigating about 20 Olympic-related contracts — some price lower than 1 million euros — for suspected violations of French legal guidelines governing conflicts of curiosity, contract dealings and use of public funds, the official stated.

Estanguet acknowledges that with an occasion so huge and expensive, it is a fixed battle to maintain tabs on everybody working to make it occur.

He detailed a number of layers of inside and exterior checks, together with steady scrutiny by state auditors, that he and different Olympic organizers work beneath in coping with service suppliers and in dealing with their finances of 4.38 billion euros (US$4.8 billion) — one of many largest chunks of the general Paris Video games spending approaching 9 billion euros. Paris 2024 says it has signed contracts with greater than 1,500 corporations to date.

No Paris 2024 worker awards contracts alone, “the choice is at all times collective,” Estanguet says.

“From the outset, we have been very cautious as a result of we all know we’re watched and we all know we’re accountable. And vis-à-vis the French, we have now this responsibility to be exemplary. Me, I’ve my picture,” says the previous athlete who on the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was chosen to hold France’s tricolor flag.

“I consider in sport. It modified my life. I wish to present that sport will change this nation and that sport will likely be a hit. And I do not need this journey to be remembered as having been badly managed.”