John Kim, the son of a powerful International Olympic Committee (IOC) member and a fugitive from US justice, has been arrested on 3-year-old charges related to the Salt Lake City Olympic scandal.
Kim was arrested on Sunday in Bulgaria on a warrant from the international police agency Interpol and faces extradition to the United States, FBI special agent Eugene Casey said on Wednesday.
He is the son of Kim Un-yong (71), a South Korean IOC member reprimanded by the International Olympic Committee in 2000 for his involvement in this city’s bribery scandal.
John Kim was one of three minor players indicted in the tainted bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics. He was accused of lying to FBI investigators and 16 counts of using a fraudulently obtained green card for a ”sham” job a telecommunications executive testified was arranged by Salt Lake’s bid leaders.
Kim, who was living on New York’s Long Island, fled to South Korea before his September 1999 indictment and never returned. He is being held by Bulgaria for likely extradition to the United States for prosecution, Casey said. In the main case, bribery racketeering charges against Salt Lake City bid chief Tom Welch and deputy Dave Johnson were reinstated by a federal appeals court on April 22 after a judge in Utah threw them out.
The two men were accused of plying IOC delegates in the early 1990s with $1-million in cash and gifts ranging from medical care to US scholarships and jobs for family members. The scandal forced the expulsion or resignation of 10 IOC members as the organisation tightened bidding rules.
Kim Un-yong was handed a ”most severe” warning by an IOC ethics panel that said he used his influence in international sports to further his son’s career. The senior Kim, who finished second in the 2001 race for IOC president, said he didn’t know the job was arranged as part of Salt Lake’s bid campaign.
The government alleges John Kim took a no-show job secretly funded by the bid committee so Kim could qualify for a green card. He was hired by Utah telecommunications executive David Simmons, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud in August 1999 in the bribery scandal’s first criminal conviction.
Simmons said he was reimbursed by the Salt Lake bid committee for Kim’s salary. He admitted writing it off anyway as a tax deduction. He said Kim held a ”sham” job — a comment that led to Simmons’s conviction in absentia of libel in a Seoul court.
John Kim and his father have maintained the younger Kim did real consulting work for Simmons, making business introductions in Asia.
Former United States Olympic Committee official Alfredo La Mont, a secret Salt Lake consultant, also pleaded to a tax charge and awaits sentencing. – Sapa-AP