Government report on Rio Olympics ticketing scandal now five months late

The Government inquiry into the Rio Olympics ticket-touting controversy won’t be completed until the end of March, five months later than planned, according to the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross - who also confirmed he has had no contact with former High Court judge Justice Carroll Moran in the interim.

However, Ross declined to comment on any pending criminal charges against Pat Hickey, the former president of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI), who was released on bail last month, allowing him to return to Ireland on health grounds. Hickey has yet to be given a court date which would necessitate his return to Brazil, where he is still due to face a range of ticket-touting charges including “ambush marketing, theft, tax evasion, money-laundering and criminal association”.

The Government’s non-statutory state inquiry into the ticketing controversy, set up on September 19th and conducted by Justice Carroll Moran, set out to establish the “policies, procedure, processes and practices” of ticket distribution adopted by the OCI, not just in Rio but going back to London 2012, and also including the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.

That report was originally expected by last November; it was then expected an interim report would be made in December, but that deadline too has since passed.

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“We gave Justice Carroll an extension, until the end of March, and that’s the situation at the moment,” said Ross, speaking this morning at the opening of the Sport Ireland National Indoor Arena in Abbotstown.

“I have no contact whatsoever with Justice Carroll. We have given him a mandate, in terms of reference, with which to deal with the problems there, and I’ve said it would be improper for me to be involved in that in any way.

“But what is absolutely certain is that he has got until the 31st of March to report. And I’m not anticipating an interim report before March 31st.”

There have been suggestions in the meantime that some of the parties involved in the ticketing situation in Rio have been “lawyering up”, for fear of being further implicated. Ross is unaware of the level of cooperation being given to Justice Moran.

“As I said, I’m not going to interfere with anything whatsoever at the moment. When he reports, he’ll report, and I’ll get properly on what’s in it after that.”

Asked how confident he was that Hickey would still face criminal charges in Brazil, Ross added: “You don’t really expect me to comment on that now, do you?”

The OCI’s own inquiry into the Rio ticketing situation, which was being carried out by Grant Thornton, was also put on hold in November after Hickey threatened legal action against his own executive committee of the OCI to prevent them from proceeding until his charges were fully heard in Brazil.

According to the OCI at the time, “this decision was taken following the receipt of a letter from Mr Hickey’s lawyers this week in which he threatened to make an application to the High Court for an injunction preventing the completion of the review. The executive committee has decided not to incur the very significant additional cost of defending any such legal proceedings.”

Next month’s EGM of the OCI is set to appoint a new executive committee, including the position of president. Several long-serving members of the OCI have come forward for reappointment, despite the recommendations of the Deloitte report, which said, among other things, that no member of the executive committee should serve more than two four-year terms, as there is “strong evidence” that limiting terms “prevents the dominance of one viewpoint or mode of thought”.