Sydney Olympics were bought ‘to a large extent’, said Australian official John Coates

John Coates, the vice-president of the International Olympic Committee and outgoing president of the Australian National Olympic Committee, said “to a large extent” that Sydney was awarded the summer Olympic Games in 2000 because it “bought the Games”.

In extracts from a recently discovered hour-long interview in 2008, Coates revealed that he offered payments to two African National Olympic Committees who were represented on the IOC panel in exchange for their votes in 1993.

Coates, who is also the president of the court of arbitration for sport, was cleared of any wrongdoing in 1999 in respect to this by an independent report by the auditor Tom Sheridan after it was alleged that this amounted to him offering bribes in exchange for votes. Sheridan said the payments were not offered directly to the IOC members and also criticised the IOC guidelines for bidding cities as unworkable.

He later admitted promising an extra $35,000 to both the NOCs represented by Kenya’s IOC member Charles Mukora and Uganda’s IOC member Francis Nyangweso at a dinner on the last night before the IOC vote in Monte Carlo. “I wasn’t going to die wondering why we didn’t win,” said Coates in 1999, adding that there had been nothing “sinister” about the arrangement.

“There were no payments made, letters were handed over with commitments to two African NOCs,” he added in 2004 after an investigation by the BBC Panorama programme.

Coates, the leading Australian official in the Olympic movement, was vice-president of the Sydney bid committee. It is understood that Coates does not dispute that, on behalf of the Australian Organising Committee at the time, he offered contingent grants and sports assistance to the NOCs of Kenya and Uganda under the AOC’s