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Meet The Secretive Group Earning $8 Billion From The Olympic Games
Gus Lubin and Samuel Blackstone|Aug. 7, 2012
The secretive group that runs the Olympics is expected to earn a record $8 billion in the 2009-2012 quadrennial cycle, according to Sportcal.
Formed to promote “Olympism,” the International Olympic Committee doesn’t get rich off the Games, but they do enjoy themselves.
The 109-member Committee gets wined and dined by cities and corporations bidding for contracts, and they get treated like royalty at the Games.
Several times they’ve been caught taking bribes, but generally what happens in Switzerland stays in Switzerland.
Olympic revenue increased 47% in the latest quadrennial.
The Committee is conveniently located in tax haven Switzerland.
Calling Switzerland home allows the non-profit IOC to avoid a 20% income tax, and that’s just the start, according to Play The Game’s Lars Jørgensen.
“The tax exemption is very important. I have no concrete figures on how much we save in dollars and cents. But the tax exemption means that we can spend even more money on our Olympic solidarity work,” said IOC member Gerhard Heiberg in an interview with Danish newspaper Information.
What’s more, bribery was basically legal in Switzerland until recently. Stronger anti-corruption laws are finally coming into place after another bribery scandal at the IOC and FIFA resulted in almost no convictions.
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