Salt Lake Olympic Chiefs Quit

The two top officials of the Salt Lake City Olympic committee resigned Friday amid a bribery scandal, the International Olympic Committee said.

In a release from its Swiss headquarters, the IOC said it had "learned with regret" that Salt Lake Organizing Committee president Frank Joklik and vice president Dave Johnson had stepped down.

It said IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had spoken about the matter Friday with Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt.

"The IOC wishes to reiterate that it has full confidence in the organizers of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games and has no doubt as to their ability to ensure the total success of these games," the statement said.

It said Samaranch promised Leavitt he would visit Salt Lake City this spring.

The resignations were expected to be announced in Salt Lake, where the boards of the organizing committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee were meeting.

A number of "lower-ranked employees" of the SLOC will be placed on administrative leave, Olympic sources speaking on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press.

Joklik and Johnson were involved in Salt Lake's successful bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. That effort has become the target of four investigations into hundreds of thousands of dollars that went into scholarships and gifts for International Olympic Committee members and their relatives.

The meetings follow Leavitt's call earlier this week for SLOC staffers embroiled in the gifts investigations to take leaves of absence. Leavitt did not identify specific staffers in his request.

The Salt Lake Tribune and KTVX-TV reported earlier Friday that Joklik and Johnson were expected to leave their organizing committee jobs.

In other developments:

• The Associated Press has learned that three months after the IOC awarded Salt Lake the Winter Games, an IOC member bought three luxury-home sites about 20 miles from the Olympic downhill course. The member earned $60,000 on the land deal that was arranged through a member of the Salt Lake bid committee.
• The New York Times quoted unidentified investigators as saing Salt Lake Olympic officials made individual cash payments ranging from $5,000 to $70,000 to IOC members from Africa and Latin America. It said investigators still were trying to determine the number of payments, the amounts and the recipients, and that some of the payments might have been legitimate reimbursement for expenses.
• Former USOC member Howard Peterson told USA Today that Salt Lake's gift-giving began in the 1980s in the competition with Anchorage, Alaska; Reno-Tahoe, Nev.; and Denver to become the U.S. bidder for the 1998 Winter Games. Peterson, a member of the 1989 USOC site selection committee, said at least three USOC board members received expense-paid trips to the area, visits he called "ski vacations."
• The Tribune reported that at least three relatives of IOC members were hired by Salt Lake companies during the bid, with the bid committee largely paying the salary of one of them.
• Olympics sponsor US West announced it has decided to withhold a $5 million payment to SLOC until it answers questions about the scandal. The phone company demanded an explanation last month and sought assurances there will be no more surprises.
• Dick Pound, the International Olympic Committee vice president who is heading that organization's inquiry into the scandal, said it has the bulk of the evidence it needs, and he is confident the panel could complete its investigation by the Jan. 23-24 target date. "I'm quite pleased with what (SLOC officials have) given us and with the level of cooperation," he said from Montreal. Pound's committee will focus on wrongdoing by IOC members.

Pound spent two days in Salt Lake City late last month interviewing officials and reviewing documents connected with the Utah capital's winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

Regarding the land deal, The Associated Press learned that Jean-Claude Ganga's purchase and sale of three residential lots were being investigated by the SLOC's ethics panel.

IOC member Jean-Claude Ganga bought $75,000 worth of land in Utah, reportedly with the help of a Salt Lake Olympic Committee member. (AP)

Ganga, from the Republic of Congo, bought the three luxury home parcels in Pleasant View in September 1995.

Ganga was introduced to the seller, a home builder, by Bennie Smith, a bid committee and SLOC member who spent eight years wooing African IOC members whose votes were considered crucial for Salt Lake.

The SLOC ethics panel is trying to determine the source of the cash for Ganga's investment, but lacks subpoena power necessary to obtain bank records, a source close to the investigation said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonyity.

Attempts to reach Ganga in Paris, Brazzaville and Cameroon were unsuccessful. Smith did not return telephone messages left at his office.

Ganga has been identified as one of three African IOC members who received free medical care from Salt Lake-based Intermountain Health Care. He reportedly was treated for hepatitis.

K. Brent Keller, a Weber County home builder, said Smith was helping Ganga look for promising land investments when the two first visited Pleasant View in August 1995.

Ganga bought three half-acre, undeveloped lots on the hillside overlooking Ogden and the Great Salt Lake for $25,000 each. Keller then built a road to the lots, put in utilities and a storm basin, and Ganga sold the lots for $45,000 each, one in 1997 and the other two in August, for a profit of $60,000.

"He basically played bank for me," Keller said. Without Ganga's purchase at essentially a wholesale price, Keller didn't have the cash to improve the lots for eventual sale to home buyers, he said.

Keller said Ganga wrote a check when he bought the land in 1995, and as far as Keller knows, he used his own cash.

Keller said that after Ganga bought the land, Smith was no longer involved.

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