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In news that will, sadly, probably not shock many sports fans, the Paris 2024 Olympics headquarters was raided by authorities, again, as part of an continuing investigation into suspected corruption.
The raid of the Paris 2024 Olympics headquarters was the second one performed by police in the past four months.
According to a statement from the Paris 2024 organizing committee, “Paris 2024 confirms that the PNF (Parquet national financier) visited its headquarters on Wednesday 18 October and obtained all the information it requested.”
The Parquet national financier, or PNF, is, according to Wikipedia, “a French judicial institution proposed in late 2013 that is responsible for tracking down serious economic and financial crime.”
The French Olympics organizers added, “Paris 2024 is cooperating fully with the investigation, as it has always done.”
Paris 2024 has been the subject of an investigation since 2017 over alleged embezzlement of public funds and favoritism over a Paris 2024 contract, the Daily Mail reports.
A second investigation of Paris 2024 was opened in 2022 related to contracts involving Solideo, the company responsible for the construction of Olympic sites and venues in Paris.
The offices of Solideo, a well as the homes of Paris 2024 chief executive Etienne Thobois and executive director of operations Edouard Donnelly, were also raided by authorities in June. A consulting firm founded by Thobois and Donnelly was also raided.
The Telegraph also reported…
The French anti-corruption agency (AFA) had previously highlighted “risks affecting probity” and “potential conflicts of interests” in regard to the Olympics which it warned could impinge on the “whiter than whiter” image of the Games.
Brigitte Henriques resigned as the president of France’s National Olympic Committee in May, prompting the International Olympic Committee to issue a statement that called on “everybody to take responsibility so that the internal arguments that have affected the CNOSF (the French National Olympic and Sports Committee) these past few months cease”.
PNF Jean-Francois Bohnert told French radio station RTL last month that the investigation is “about favoritism, of illegal interest-taking” and “the way certain contracts have been distributed.”
At that point in the investigation, Bohnert said he had not seen “any elements” of “the most serious cases of corruption or influence peddling.”
Whether that has now changed, with yet another raid performed on the Paris 2024 Olympics headquarters this week, has not been revealed.
Paris will host the Olympics between July 26 to August 11 in 2024, followed by the Paralympics from August 28 to September 8.