Home of Brazil’s Top Olympic Official Is Searched in Bribe Inquiry
On Tuesday, Brazilian and French officials said the police had searched the headquarters of Brazil’s Olympic committee, the Rio 2016 organizing committee
and numerous business offices as part of the investigation.
5, 2017
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The federal police searched the home of the president of Brazil’s Olympic committee on Tuesday and called him in for questioning as part of a widening investigation into allegations
that bribes were paid to secure the 2016 Games for Rio de Janeiro.
Arthur Soares was that greasing the wheels to organize the payment of bribes from Cabral directly to African members of the I.O.C.,
They said that Mr. Soares, at the behest of Mr. Cabral, deposited $2 million in bank accounts belonging
to Mr. Diack’s son just three days before the vote to decide which city would host the 2016 Games.
"The Olympic Games," Ms. Schneider added, "were then used as a trampoline to commit Olympic-size acts of corruption, in civil engineering,
in infrastructure projects, in the metro." The warrants executed Tuesday grew out of an earlier investigation involving Mr. Diack.
Prosecutors at a news conference accused Carlos Arthur Nuzman, the head of the committee,
of orchestrating bribes to members of the International Olympic Committee.
Evidence gathered by French financial prosecutors in
that case led to the discovery of bank accounts that the authorities suspected were used to funnel cash to him in the days before Rio’s successful Olympic bid, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
