Brazil police say Rio Olympics were bought in corrupt scheme
6 Sep 2017 7:11 PM GMT
Rio De Janeiro: Brazilian officials said have that the country's Olympics chief was the "lynchpin" in a plot to bribe the International Olympic Committee into awarding Rio de Janeiro last year's Games.
Brazilian police on Tuesday said in a statement they were probing "an international corruption scheme" aimed at "the buying of votes for the election of (Rio) by the International Olympic Committee as the venue for the 2016 Olympics."
Revealing a nine-month investigation spanning several countries and dubbed "Unfair Play," the police said Carlos Nuzman had been taken in for questioning and his house searched. Nuzman, who was the pointman for Rio's successful bid to become the first South American host of the Olympics, left his house in Rio's posh Leblon neighbourhood while police officers exited with bags of evidence.
Prosecutors said Nuzman was detained to give testimony and although not arrested he had his passport confiscated.
An arrest warrant was issued for Arthur Soares, a businessman who won lucrative pre-Olympics contracts from Rio's government when it was headed by the now imprisoned state governor Sergio Cabral. He lives in Miami.
A former Soares associate, Eliane Pereira Cavalcante, was arrested in Rio and 11 properties were subjected to search and seizure raids. One of them was in Paris, French authorities said.
In Lausanne, Switzerland, an IOC spokesman appeared to have been taken by surprise.
"The IOC has learned about these circumstances from the media and is making efforts to get the full information," the spokesman said.
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