Posted on 03/01/2003 2:12:03 PM PST by Archangelsk
Chief of U.S. Olympic Committee Quits Amid a Furor Over Ethics By RICHARD SANDOMIR
[L] loyd Ward resigned yesterday as the chief executive officer of the United States Olympic Committee, two Olympic officials said. The resignation ended a two-month siege in which he resisted stepping down, despite having been punished for violating the organization's ethics code and criticized for his management record.
One of the officials said that Ward cleaned out his office Friday night.
Mr. Ward's resignation came less than a day after two United States senators, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Republican of Colorado, and Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, visited the U.S.O.C.'s training center in Colorado Springs and castigated the excesses of the organization's management.
On Friday, Senator Stevens told a gymnasium packed with Olympic committee employees, athletes and coaches that documentation and statements provided confidentially by current and former Olympic committee workers describe actions within the U.S.O.C. that may border on fraud and other crimes. Mr. Ward was there, in the bleachers.
Senator Campbell, a 1964 Olympian in judo, has repeatedly called for Ward's resignation. At the gymnasium, he said, "I don't know how you get the ship of Olympic state back on track without new people in charge."
Another critic, Herb Perez, a member of the organization's policy-making executive committee, in a telephone interview yesterday said: "I applaud Lloyd's belated understanding of what was required of him. It's unfortunate that this has taken so much time away from our focus and concentration on athletes and national governing bodies, and that so many good and ethical people, like Marty Mankamyer, and others, were casualties."
Last week, Mr. Perez filed notice that he would seek a motion to fire Mr. Ward at the executive committee's next scheduled meeting, next month in Fort Worth. He attempted to raise a similar motion during the group's conference call on Tuesday, but it was quashed because it was not an official meeting. Details of the conference call, which demonstrated anger and distrust among the committee's members, were known quickly because one of its members let reporters listen in.
Mr. Ward's resignation is the seventh since Jan. 13, when the U.S.O.C.'s executive committee concurred with an internal ethics panel's finding that he had "created the appearance of a conflict of interest" by directing a staff member to help a business planned by his brother and a friend to provide backup power to the coming Pan American Games in the Dominican Republic. Last month, the $184,000 bonus Mr. Ward earned in 2002 by meeting most of his performance targets was taken from him for his ethical violations.
Besides Mr. Ward, the others who have resigned were: Ms. Mankamyer, the president, who was forced out by the U.S.O.C.'s five vice presidents, who felt she had undermined Mr. Ward; three ethics panel members; the ethics compliance officer, Patrick Rodgers; and an executive committee member, Brian Derwin.
Since being asked to resign on Jan. 12 by William J. Hybl, a former U.S.O.C. president, Mr. Ward has held on, frequently saying that his background as a point guard on Michigan State's basketball team and his struggles as a black man to become a prominent executive gave him the strength and tenacity to withstand attacks on him from the news media and from within the organization.
But he ran into trouble with members of the executive committee by not divulging his membership in the Augusta National Golf Club, which does not admit women as members, a policy that is contrary to the U.S.O.C.'s ethic of inclusiveness. The committee eventually, but reluctantly, supported his position that he would fight from the inside to change the club's practice of exclusivity.
During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing into the crisis at the U.S.O.C., Mr. Ward engaged in a testy debate with Mr. Rogers, the former ethics officer, and was chided for belonging to the Augusta club by Senator Campbell, who said he would never belong to a club that discriminated against anyone.
In the past week, The Denver Post detailed trips by Mr. Ward and his wife, Lita, that they billed to the U.S.O.C., including one to Atlantic City for the Evander Holyfield-Chris Byrd fight and another to Geneva, Switzerland, which cost nearly $15,000 in air fare, to meet with Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee. There were also trips that Mrs. Ward took on her own, to their home near Sarasota, Fla., and two to figure skating events that Mr. Ward said she took as his official delegate.
Two Olympic officials, including Mr. Rodgers, said that Ward's contract did not allow for most of the travel, and that Mrs. Ward was only a part of her husband's delegation at the Olympics and Pan Am Games.
Mr. Ward has also been stung by reports that he authorized $35,000 in moving and living expenses for his chief marketing officer, Toby Wong, to move from Phoenix to Colorado Springs, on top of a $50,000 relocation she received as part of her deal to go to the U.S.O.C. last year. She never had to account for how she spent the $35,000, never moved (she commuted and lived in hotels) and resigned last month.
For Mr. Ward, resigning under pressure from the Olympic committee is another blow to his reputation. He was previously the chief executive of iMotors, an Internet venture that sold used cars but ran out of financing. He held the same position at Maytag, but resigned because of disagreements with the board about the company's strategic direction. He received a severance payment of $1.7 million.
The only Toby Wong I know comes from one of the best crime movies of all time, Reservoir Dogs:
Mr. White: For the past fifteen minutes now, you've just been droning on with names. "Toby...Toby...Toby... Toby Wong...Toby Wong...Toby Chung...f*****g Charlie Chan." I got Madonna's big d**k outta my right ear, and Toby Jap I-don't- know-what, outta my left
We are still trying to hammer out the bribe situation from Salt Lake City. Gifts (bribes) to influence decisions also go to relatives (college scholarships for Committee members' children) and business associates.
This is a case of the corruption of the endless bureauracies in Europe poisoning the ways international organizations are managed.
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