Rolex bribe just one of many made by Salt Lake team

Olympic bid chief Tom Welch would have given the shirt off his back for the games. But instead, he gave the Rolex off his wrist.

Once, at a dinner in Salt Lake, Welch observed Jean-Claude Ganga, an International Olympic Committee delegate on a visit from the Republic of Congo, admiring his expensive watch.

"Before the end of the dinner, Mr. Welch had given him the watch off his wrist," Rod Hamson, who was the bid campaign's finance director, testified on Thursday.

Hamson said he reimbursed Welch US$5,469 for a new Rolex.

Hamson was due back on the stand yesterday for a third day of testimony in the bribery trial of Welch, who was president of the Salt Lake bid and organizing committees, and Dave Johnson, who was senior vice president.

The vote-buying scandal resulted in the expulsion or resignations of 10 IOC members, including Ganga, and led to 15 felony charges against Welch and Johnson.

Hamson is helping the government introduce checks, vouchers and other documents showing how Welch and Johnson lavished US$1 million in cash, gifts and favors on IOC delegates who awarded Salt Lake the 2002 Winter Olympics. Welch and Johnson aren't disputing the payments and gifts but insist they weren't bribes, and were just the way Olympic business was conducted.

According to testimony, the two men were willing to do almost anything for the games, even wiring US$1,000 a month to the nonexistent daughter of an IOC member who kept the money for himself.

Testimony Thursday showed that Welch and Johnson were readily fooled into paying US$7,000 to the fictional daughter of General Zein Gadir of Sudan based on the advice of a consultant.

"On a personal level: he has a daughter in UK. Help may be extended. He expects US$1,000 only a month to Zema Gadir," Muttaleb Ahmad, one of Salt Lake's Olympic bid consultants, wrote to Johnson in October 1994.

The consultant provided an account number at a London bank where Hamson said he wired regular payments until June 1995, just days before the IOC awarded Salt Lake the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Hamson didn't get a chance Thursday to tell the jury that Zema Gadir didn't exist, and prosecutors didn't bring it up, but Johnson acknowledged outside court that the bid leaders had been duped.

Johnson said Gadir had several wives and he never questioned whether Zema was among the man's many children. It wasn't until the Olympic scandal broke and Zein Gadir admitted to the IOC in 1999 that Zema was a pseudonym for himself that the ruse became apparent.