Olympia 2016: Buying votes for Rio: Razzia with Olympic boss and arrest warrants

After a major raid in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, Carlos Arthur Nuzman and ex-governor Sergio Cabral, who is already in custody, are more than ever suspected of having brought the Summer Games to Zuckerhut in 2016 with bribes.

Judicial officers knocked on the door of Nuzman’s door in the early morning hours, securing alleged evidence and appointing the head of the Rio 2016 Comité for interrogation in the morning.

The 75-year-old had to hand in his passport and is not allowed to leave the country.At the same time, the seat of the Olympic Committee was also ransacked.Around 70 officers were deployed to execute two arrest warrants and carry out a total of eleven house searches.

Nuzman’s lawyer Sergio Mazzillo denied all accusations against his client:”We still have no insight into the files.But I can assure you right now that he didn’t commit any crimes.Unfortunately, this is a media spectacle.”

Operation “Unfair Play” is also targeting the large-scale entrepreneur Arthur Soares, while in Rio it is only called “King Arthur” because of its influence in the highest political circles.While the 57-year-old is probably in Miami, Florida and already on Interpol’s wanted list, his former business partner Eliane Calvacante has been arrested in Rio.

The couple is expected to participate in the award ceremony a few days before the 31.Olympic Summer Games in October 2009 and paid 1.5 million dollars to the son of Lamine Diack, a member of the IOC with voting rights at that time as president of the World Athletics Federation.Sergio Cabral, at the behest of Sergio Cabral, at that time prime minister of the state of Rio, has been imprisoned since November 2016 for corruption himself.

Cabral was supposed to receive the bribe money for awarding a public contract, as is customary between the two of them.But “King Arthur” was instructed to pay the two million dollars to African IOC members for votes in favour of Rio.The French newspaper Le Monde had already reported in March that the former athletics star Frankie Fredericks allegedly collected 500,000 dollars.

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The public prosecutor’s office in Rio sees it as proven that Nuzman was “the intermediary responsible for bringing together the interested parties, liaising and oiling connections to organize the mechanism of kickbacks from Cabral directly to African IOC members”.

The investigation, initiated by the French judiciary and accompanied on the spot by officials from Paris, had already been launched nine months ago.The payments were made either in cash, by means of fictitious transactions or by reimbursement of personal expenses, with Soares’ business account in the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda being used in particular.The arrest warrants were issued for “evidence of corruption, money laundering and criminal organisation”.

The French public prosecutor’s office has received a testimony that Nuzman obtained Russian citizenship in return for his vote in favour of Sochi in the 2014 Winter Games.In order to avoid a possible flight of Nuzman to Russia and thus avoid prosecution in Brazil, his passport had been collected.

Rio had left the country on 2.October 2009, the contract for organizing the 31.Olympic Summer Games.In the first round, the Brazilians were still in second place behind Madrid (28) with 26 votes, but in the following two rounds the Spanish capital and at the end of Japan’s metropolis Tokyo stood out with 66:32 votes.Previously, the highly traded U. S. competitor Chicago had dropped out at the start.