IOC Scandal: Bribery, Or Help?

Charles Mukora has big dreams for this rundown farm in Nanyuki, three hours from Nairobi, at the foot of Mt. Kenya. It's not an impressive sight -- dilapidated buildings and a few chickens. But when Mukora looks, he sees gold at the end of the rainbow.

"What I planned for the farm is to have a training center for the youth of the world," says Mukora, the president of Kenya s National Olympic Committee and a member of the IOC. "We are going to have a dining room, we'll have a swimming pool, multi-purpose gymnasium and cover every aspect of training."

Mukora's dream is to build a world class training center, one that would attract athletes from many different countries. It seemed like a valid plan. Mukora was one of the most powerful people in African sports, with a vote to award the lucrative Olympic games. He used that influence to raise money and got about $34,000. The only problem, reports CBS Correspondent John Roberts: The money came from Salt Lake City, which at the time was gunning to be an Olympic host city. The IOC says it was a bribe.

While Mukora -- one of four IOC members who have been ousted so far as a result of the scandal -- freely admits he took the money from the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, he adamantly denies that his vote was ever for sale. The money, he says, wasn't a bribe. Rather, it was a gift between good friends.

Salt Lake won the winter Olympics, but Mukora lost his position -- forced to resign or be expelled from the IOC as a result of the payments. But he insists that monetary gifts like this are necessary so that developing countries can afford to compete.

Getting appropriate funding from the Olympic Committee and the Olympic teams has been very difficult, Mukora says, not only for Kenya but for all African countries. He says that help from bid cities to these disadvantaged countries is "absolutely OK, and the only way you can have a level playing ground."

IOC rules do permit bid cities to give grants to develop sports. But the problem is what Mukora did with the Salt Lake money -- and another $10,000 he received from the Sydney Organizing Committee.

Mukora says the money went to form "a foundation in the formation of the foundation.". That carefully worded answer still doesn't tell the whole truth. Most of the money, more than $29,000, didn't go to sports at all. It went to settle an unrelated civil lawsuit against Mukora. And that seems to be where he stepped over the line.

"We cannot forgive him for what he has done as a sports leader of this country," says Kip Keino, one of Kenya's greatest sports heroes. Mukora was his coach when Kip won a gold medal in the 1968 Olympics. Now, Keino, who built his own training camp with IOC funds, will replace him as head of Kenya s Olympic Committee. And he says Mukora, whose name in Swahili means crook, has left a mark on Africa that won't be easy to erase.

"We have sold our country, and we have mae the name of our country and the continent of Africa a bad name," says Keino.

But expelling corrupt IOC members is only half the solution says Sam Ramsamy, an IOC member from South Africa. He says there's a double standard in punishing members, but letting cities that offered the bribes get off without any punishment. At this month s IOC meeting, he'll propose new rules.

"The bid cities must deposit a very large sum of money and that money should remain there until after the Olympic games are held," says Ramsamy. "So that if any corruption or disruption of any manner is discovered, that that large sum of money would be forfeited".

Despite losing his position at the IOC, Mukora hopes to stay active in Kenyan sports. He still hopes to one day build his training center. But he refuses to answer the one question that could clear his name. Asked whether or not he voted for Salt Lake City, he refuses to answer: "Well, I can't tell that. It's my personal right not to divulge that information to you." .