The Paris Olympics are Under Investigation - and Stop Me if You've Heard This Before - for Corruption

Chesnot. Getty Images.

In the grand scheme of things, it's almost quaint the way the world got all indignant about some professional golfers opting to take their professional golf over to a league financed by a corrupt oil regime. Not because that government paying their bills isn't authoritarian, oppressive, and strongly suspected of committing heinous acts. Because it is all of those things. And not because of the absurdity of asking guys who hit a ball with a stick to turn down tens - and in some cases hundreds - of millions of dollars when our own government, defense contractors and major corporations are making deals in the tens of billions with that same country every single day. 

No, the reason the LIV/PGA controversy is so cute is because morally speaking, taking golf money from the Saudis misdemeanor parking violation compared to how the International Olympic Committee and the governments that host the Games are up to. To use the metaphor all the LIV Golf moralists loved the most, the golfers might be getting into bed with the Saudis. But these Olympic cities step right down into the IOC's sex dungeon, shackle their own wrists and ankles, climb into the swing and beg to be abused. And the Olympics never spares them the whips and chains. 

Next up for the submissive to put on the Gimp suit and receive discipline from their dom: The good people of Paris:

Source - French police searched the Paris Olympic organizers’ headquarters on Tuesday as part of corruption investigations into contracts linked to the Games, according to prosecutors, the third straight time graft allegations have dogged a Summer Olympics.

The Paris organizing committee said in a statement that a search was carried out at its headquarters in the suburb of Saint-Denis and it was cooperating with investigators. It defended what it called “stringent procedures” around several hundred contracts it has awarded for the Games. 

Tuesday’s search and other related raids were linked to two preliminary investigations of the Paris Olympics. …

Corruption allegations have hung over the world’s biggest sporting event many times — from accusations surrounding how the Games were awarded to how contracts for construction, sponsorship and team services were handed out.

Accusations of vote buying linked to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and the Tokyo Games in 2021 led to the removal of several members of the IOC. Scandals around the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games led to reforms that limited IOC members’ contact with candidate countries, though did not entirely remove the scope for corruption. …

The probe opened in 2017 is looking into suspected embezzlement of public funds and favoritism, and concerns about an unspecified contract reached by Paris organizers, the prosecutor’s office said.

The 2022 investigation followed an audit by the French Anti-corruption Agency. The prosecutor’s office said that case targets suspected conflict of interest and favoritism involving several contracts reached by the organizing committee and Solideo, the public body in charge of Olympic infrastructure.

To quote the second most famous French law enforcement official (after Inspector Clouseau), Captain Louis Renault, I'm shocked! Shocked! 

… to find suspected conflict of interest and favoritism going on at an Olympics!

Consider not only does this extend the Summer Games consecutive corruption streak to three straight Olympics, but that count doesn't include the Winter Games conducted by oppressive oligarchies in Beijing 2022 and Sochi 2014. In case you'd forgotten, Sochi is a tropical area with palm trees. The budget was supposed to be $12 billion total, but ended up costing $51 billion. In fact, they built a highway from the Olympic center to the only mountain in the area with snow that cost more than the entire budget of the London 2012 Summer Games. Not uncoincidentally, all that that land belonged to and all those construction contracts went to Putin associates. But sure, let's pretend conflict of interest and favoritism among sketchy people is not how the IOC does business. And always has:

-. Getty Images.

At least when crooked despots tried to get to Paris in 1914 and 1940, the French resisted. But then decided to invite them in for 2024. Either because the people in charge are too ignorant of history or two corrupt themselves to recognize how this would play out. And I don't know which is worse. 

I have little to no respect for the way Massachusetts is run. But back in 2015, Boston was coming dangerously close to hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics. But virtually no one who lived or worked anywhere near the city wanted any part of this corruptocracy. It didn't take long to notice that everyone who was pushing for it either owned a construction company or was a former politician making $7,500 a day in legal fees to promote it. There literally wasn't one person advocating for the Games who was doing it out of civic duty or in the public interest. And in one of our government's finest hours, state leaders told the IOC there'd be no deal until they put it in writing that no taxpayer money would go toward this. And they noped off to Los Angeles before the document even hit the desk. 

Good fucking riddance. And best of luck to Paris and LA as you're about to be suckered in by the greatest grift ever perpetrated in the name of sports. The joke's on you, chumps.