SALT LAKE OLYMPICS Former bid committee president directed cash

Wednesday's testimony reinforced the government's case.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Olympic bid chief Tom Welch repeatedly told his finance director to write checks for International Olympic Committee delegates with little or no justification for the payments, the former staffer testified.
Rod Hamson was to take the witness stand again Thursday in the bribery trial of Welch, former president of the Salt Lake City bid and organizing committees, and Dave Johnson, former senior vice president. Both are accused of lavishing $1 million in cash, gifts and favors on IOC members who awarded Salt Lake the 2002 Winter Olympics.
The guise
Hamson said Welch told him to book payments to IOC delegates under budget categories for travel or a humanitarian program that purported to support impoverished foreign athletes.
The vote-buying scandal resulted in the expulsion or resignations of 10 IOC members and led to 15 felony charges against Welch and Johnson. The two aren't disputing the payments and gifts but insist they weren't bribes, and were just the way Olympic business was conducted.
Hamson left the Salt Lake Organizing Committee four months after the scandal broke and was given immunity for his testimony.
In one instance, the bid committee gave IOC delegate Rene Essomba and his daughter a total of $195,000, according to federal documents. Hamson said that included $15,000 in cash to Essomba -- a surgeon and influential delegate from Cameroon -- for travel expenses, even though Essomba never paid for his 1994 trip to Salt Lake City.
Disclosure
A report that the Salt Lake Organizing Committee paid for a scholarship to American University in Washington for Essomba's daughter, Sonia, triggered the scandal in November 1998. Rene Essomba died in August 1998.
Hamson's testimony Wednesday reinforced the government's case after a setback earlier in the day when U.S. District Judge David Sam threw out what prosecutors considered their strongest piece of evidence.
Sam excluded the 28-page "geld file," a gossipy dossier of International Olympic Committee delegates that listed their personal and family needs and standing in the organization that awarded Utah the 2002 Winter Olympics. Sam said the authenticity of the geld file and other documents was in doubt.
Hamson also testified Welch had him make regular deposits at a Salt Lake bank, run by Olympic trustee Spencer Eccles, into a savings account opened for ousted IOC delegate Jean-Claude Ganga of the Republic of Congo.
Gifts galore
Hamson said Welch never explained why the bid committee was paying Ganga, who took $322,000 in cash, first-class travel, shopping sprees, a Rolex watch and other gifts from Salt Lake, according to federal documents.
"He believed Mr. Ganga had influence over all the members from Africa. He was very powerful," Hamson said.