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The Olympic movement has a trillion minor and a dozen major sponsors worldwide. These big guns include Coca-Cola, Visa, IBM and Time Inc. Each sponsor kicks in approximately $50 million over a four-year period for the "festoon"--the right to use the Olympic rings in corporate promotions. Then there is NBC, which has paid $3.5 billion for the rights to all five Winter and Summer Games between 2000 and 2008. A spot poll by TIME indicates none of them are amused. David D'Allesandro, president of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, a company with festoon privileges, said the I.O.C. must do an earnest investigation of the malfeasance--and not just in Utah--followed by a thorough purge. "If they fail to do that and something else comes up, the rings won't be tarnished, they'll be broken," he said. "If they attempt to simply line up 12 I.O.C. members and shoot them and think they can go back to Switzerland, they're wrong. They can't come back a year from now and say, 'Oops, here's another one; there was a leak, and we happened to hear about it.' Boardrooms will shake if this is mishandled. That includes NBC's." He expects future sponsorship deals with the I.O.C. to contain some sort of morals clause, which will be particularly galling to an organization that has made a tough-cop reputation by busting teenagers for taking the wrong nasal spray before the 400-m backstroke.
While Salt Lake City seems to be subjecting itself to the lash with puritanical zeal, early signs are not good that the I.O.C. will be similarly contrite. Asked by TIME about his group's investigation, Samaranch said, "We heard some rumors and dispatched I.O.C. director Francois Carrard to investigate. When he got there, he was assured that everything was straightforward and above-board. Now that we have the facts, we intend to take action and rid the I.O.C. of all corruption. Let's not forget that it was just a handful of individuals who acted improperly."
This has ever been his approach. The I.O.C. under Samaranch avoids trouble until someone--often someone in the U.S.--says it is trouble. He doesn't much care for all the rules that maintain in the U.S. When U.S. track star Butch Reynolds, despite having failed a doping test, obtained a Supreme Court order allowing him to compete in the 1992 U.S. Olympic trials, Samaranch considered requiring athletes to sign an agreement waiving their right to sue the I.O.C. in doping cases. (The idea could never have worked in a democracy, and was abandoned.) When Samaranch wasn't happy with his own testimony in the 60 Minutes story on Nagano, particularly the part about being proud of past associations with Franco's Fascist regime, he sought, in vain, to have his interview retaped. And now this: four U.S. investigations, at least two of them criminal investigations, digging into the I.O.C.'s long-standing tradition of gift giving.
Certainly Samaranch wishes this never had happened. But whom does he blame?
--Reported by Cathy Booth and Anne Palmer Peterson/Salt Lake City, Donald Macintyre/Tokyo, Sylvester Monroe/Atlanta, Thomas Sancton/Paris, Robert Kroon/Geneva, with other bureaus