#Rio2016: Australian Athletes Fined for Allegedly Falsifying Documents at Basketball Event

Nine Australian Olympic athletes were detained overnight and fined for tampering with their identity cards to be able to watch their home country’s basketball semi-final, officials said today.

They were taken into custody after Olympic Park games officials suspected their accreditations had been tampered with to gain access to Australia’s basketball semifinal against Serbia.

The athletes were detained at the venue and taken to a police station where they remained several hours later, Tancred said. The athletes have not been identified.

She apologised to the court and explained the athletes were supporting their teammates, were not attempting to defraud anyone, no-one had suffered a material loss and no-one was harmed as a result of the incident.

“This I can not see”, he told reporters on Saturday.

“The translation is not precise but it was effectively for using a document for a objective not intended, falsifying a document”, de Jong said on Saturday morning. I think it’s very important to note that the athletes were not at fault.

“Early this evening a number of Australian athletes went to support their mates at the Australia- Serbia match”, de Jong said.

It was the final frustration of Australia’s troubled Games, taking in accommodation complaints, theft, a small fire and one of their swimmers being mugged a few days before the nine athletes were detained. It was a very hard evening, night, for them and they shouldn’t have had to go through that.

The athletes are being questioned at a Rio police station accompanied by AOC lawyer Fiona de Jong.

She added: “What I can say though is that any of those off field issues and challenges that we had, I’m very, very confident in saying that they did not impact on our performance at all”.

The athletes were each fined 10,000 brazilian reais ($3,119).

A public holiday in Rio on Monday means the Australian Olympic Committee will still not be able to pay the AU$47,000 fine and collect the athletes’ confiscated passports unless they can do so outside the city.

“Twenty nine medals, including eight gold, however is shot of where we wanted to be”, she said.