Three more Irish officials quizzed in ticket scandal

Hickey, the former top European official at the International Olympic Committee, was arrested in Brazil last week on charges that he took part in illegal ticket sales for the Rio Games, which ended on Sunday.

The Olympic Council of Ireland’s team leader Kevin Kilty and chief executive Stephen Martin arrived at police headquarters wearing the Irish team uniform.

“I’m Irish and I’m out here, I suppose”, Mr Kilty said when asked why he was being targeted by police.

A judge in Rio will decide whether to return the passports of two Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) officials, including one from Northern Ireland.

Hickey, a 71-year-old Irishman, is in a maximum-security Rio prison following a police raid last week at his hotel on suspicion he participated the illegal sales plot.

Police produced emails that allegedly show former OCI president Pat Hickey and the owner of THG, Marcus Evans, discussing tickets for the Rio games.

At a press conference in Rio on Tuesday evening, the officers revealed that mails between THG’s Evans and Mr Hickey went back to 2010. There they met Mr Henihan who fell ill shortly after police seized his passport.

The two men will now have their passports returned to them and they can return to Ireland.

They were escorted inside and taken to the offices of NAGE, the initials for the nucleus of support for large events, including Rio’s specialist police unit set up to deal with criminal activity involving the city’s staging of the World Cup and Olympics.

In a statement, Anne Marie James, solicitor for Mr Hickey’s family, says no charges have yet been brought, “nor has an appropriate venue for a bail application been made available”.

Patrick Hickey, ANOC senior vice-president and president of the European Olympic Committees, prior to the 2015 ANOC Awards at DAR Constitution Hall on October 29, 2015.

A Rio police official said: “We are continuing the investigation into the worldwide scheme of ticket scalping”.

Former Barcelona star Romario said he alerted the Brazilian government to the “activities of the ticket Mafia”.

O’Brien and Delaney, as well as Hickey’s secretary Linda O’Riley, had warrants for their passports to be seized by a Brazilian judge.

They are calling on Minister Shane Ross and Charlie Flanagan to intervene, and “immediately issue a statement setting out the steps the Department of Foreign Affairs is taking to object to the manner in which an elderly Irish citizen was arrested and is still being detained in Brazil”.

On Tuesday, Rio police said they suspected that the highest-ranking members of the OCI plotted with businessmen to help transfer tickets to an unauthorized vendor who would sell them for high fees disguised as hospitality services.