The company that insured organizers of the 2002 Winter Games has paid millions of dollars in legal fees to defend bid chiefs Tom Welch and Dave Johnson from government bribery charges.
Johnson, who worked as Welch’s deputy on both Salt Lake’s Olympic bid and organizing committees, told the Deseret Morning News the final payout was $12 million. Johnson’s lawyer, Max Wheeler, said the amount attorneys actually ended up with was less.
“The carrier told us their total loss on the policy was, I think they said, $10 million, but that includes all the costs,” Wheeler said.
That would include fees incurred through the trial for the two men, which ended in December. The insurance carrier, National Union Fire Insurance Co., had already paid for some of the $4 million in fees for attorneys and legal services for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, its top officials and former bid leaders during the 19-month federal investigation of this city’s tainted bid for the Winter Olympics.
The settlement paid in late summer 2002 covered some, but not all of the $4 million, SLOC President Fraser Bullock said at the time. He wouldn’t provide an exact figure.
Insurance company spokes-man Andrew Silver declined comment.
U.S. District Judge David Sam threw out the lawsuit in December against Welch and Johnson, who were accused of bribery for lavishing $1 million in cash, gifts and favors on Olympic officials who awarded this city the 2002 Winter Games.
Sam’s ruling came midway through the trial and closed the book on the worst scandal in Olympic history.
When acquitting the two men, Sam said that in his 18 years on the federal bench, he had never seen a case so devoid of “criminal intent or evil purpose.”
Welch was president of the committee of Utah business and political leaders that lobbied International Olympic Committee delegates for the 2002 games. Johnson was senior vice president.
Prosecutors had argued that the two executives defrauded their overseers by taking money from a humanitarian program to dole out gifts and favors to the IOC delegates who in 1995 selected Salt Lake City for the 2002 games.
The gifts included trips to Disneyland, stopovers at Paris hotels, guns, car repairs, bathroom furnishings, a Rolex watch, basketball tickets, shopping sprees and college scholarships for IOC members’ relatives.
Welch and Johnson insisted they committed no crime, arguing that the gifts were merely business as usual in the Olympic bidding process and that other countries did it, too. Both refused to accept plea bargains.
The judge also threw out the case in 2001 before it reached trial, sparing Salt Lake City the embarrassment of a courtroom spectacle leading up to the Olympic Games. A federal appeals court restored the charges in April 2003, saying the government deserved a chance to put on its case.
© 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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