IOC to begin auditing of money to international federations

The International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has called on other major sporting organisations to follow its lead in the fight against corruption and doping.

“As a result, all our accounts are audited at a higher worldwide financial reporting standard and we are publishing everything in our annual report, as is common practice in the corporate world; we have term and age limits for all IOC members; and we have a chief ethics and compliance officer, an audit committee and an independent ethics commission”.

“What we would like to obtain is that this money which is coming from sport goes to sport and that the choices on who’s benefiting on the finish from these contributions are being taken with respect to guidelines of excellent governance”, Bach informed reporters on the finish of an IOC Executive Board assembly.

Bach said: “It is obvious that not only the IOC but many sports are concerned [about] good governance because many people generalise and [see such issues] as not just about specific worldwide federations but about sport in general”.

Kenya, facing scrutiny from anti-doping officials and criticism that it is not doing enough to tackle the problem, recently banned seven athletes for doping offences, raising the total number of drug cases to 40 in the African nation in the last three years.

The International Olympic Committee approved Wednesday a cost-cutting proposal from Tokyo Olympic organizers to move the track cycling and mountain bike events to the Shizuoka Prefecture city of Izu, about 150 kilometers south of central Tokyo.

IOC member Gerardo Werthein, Delegate IOC Member for broadcast rights in the Americas, said: “This exciting agreement demonstrates the IOC’s belief that Brazil’s largest media group, Grupo Globo, is well placed to provide the best possible promotion of Olympic sport and the Olympic values in Brazil in the long term, not only during the two weeks of each edition of the Games, but all year round. But yes, it is also an opportunity to renew the trust in this power of sport to change the world for the better”, Bach said in a statement.

The IOC also asked the national Olympic committees of Russian Federation and Kenya to make sure they have efficient out-of-competition testing programs in place for all athletes in all sports.

Cycling events at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be held 75 miles away from the Japanese capital as part of a £1.2 billion programme in cuts to the Games budget.

The new organisation should also have a professional intelligence-gathering unit, Bach said. We believe the Olympic Games, beyond a sports event, is the world’s biggest example of inspiration and overcoming challenges.

“We are now in a very operational phase where these kinds of political issues have much less influence than at other stages”, he said.