Golden bonuses and revolving doors: behind the scenes of the Paris Olympic Games bid

InsideInside the conference centre in the Peruvian capital Lima, there was jubilation among the French delegation, and notably tears of joy in the eyes of Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday approved the awarding of the 2024 summer Olympic Games to Paris, and those of 2028 to Los Angeles – the only two candidates for either. It will be the first time the French capital has hosted the summer Olympics in 100 years.

It was also the first time that a simultaneous double award for the Games was made by the IOC, and after the withdrawal of candidatures from Budapest, Hamburg and Rome, daunted by the funds required for investing in infrastructures, and public opposition to the outlay, it was something of a formality. When the IOC met in Lausanne, Switzerland, in July this year and approved the awarding of the 2024 and 2028 events at the same time, the choice appeared to be sealed, as witnessed by the beaming faces of the French attendees, who included newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron and Hidalgo.

But barely four years ago, few people believed in the possibility that Paris could or should become a candidate for the 2024 Olympic Games, including some within the then-socialist government. The doubters cited the cost of hosting the games, the successive corruption scandals that had tarnished the IOC, and the bitter deception and recriminations when Paris lost its bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, won by London.

In this report on the background of the Paris 2024 bid, Mediapart interviewed several leading figures in the French sporting world, and former sports ministry officials (most of whom spoke on condition their name was withheld), and also obtained access to documents summarizing meetings at ministerial level and others from within the bodies promoting the candidature of the French capital.

Championing the Paris 2024 bid against the odds were three men; Bernard Lapasset, Étienne Thobois and Tony Estanguet. Lapasset was chairman of World Rugby, the governing body of rugby union, from 2008 to 2016, and played a key role in France being awarded host for the 2007 rugby World Cup. Thobois, a former badminton player, including at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, who later graduated from Paris business school ESCP, has long worked as a lobbyist in sport, including for the Paris bid for the 2008 Olympics. Estanguet was three times an Olympics gold medallist in slalom canoeing and a gold and silver medallist in numerous international canoeing competitions until he retired from the sport five years ago (after winning a gold medal at the 2012 London games).

In April 2013, an ambitious Lapasset created the French Committee for International Sport (Comité français du sport international), the CFSI, which was dedicated to promoting France as host for the Olympic Games. Lapasset had on paper the ideal profile for being the leader of the project. With a solid reputation in the sporting world, his experience with, and knowledge of, the IOC dates from his successful project to include rugby sevens (with teams of just seven players) into the Olympics.

As of 2013, Lapasset lobbied the French government to back the Paris 2024 bid, and succeeded in convincing the then-foreign affairs minister Laurent Fabius to use his ministry’s diplomatic network to promote the project. In January 2014, his deputy at the CFSI, Michaël Aloïsio, a former official with the French sports ministry and the French taekwondo federation, met with members of the “inter-ministerial delegation for economic intelligence” which was attached to the French prime minister’s office. Mediapart has gained access to a number of ministerial reports and documents from the French committee leading the Paris 2024 bid, and that first meeting with Aloïsio was, according to official notes, aimed at “mapping the different boards and secondary bodies of different authorities, notably those of the International Olympic Committee”, and to begin lobbying them by “striking up appropriate alliances with public and private actors and with other very influential committees”.

Lapasset, meanwhile, would succeed in convincing then-prime minister Manuel Valls and then-president François Hollande to publicly announce, on November 6th 2014,  that they were “in favour” of Paris launching a bid.

That statement of intent was concretised by the creation, at the end of 2015, of “Paris 2024”, a business structure “of public interest”, (groupement d’intérêt public, or GIP) which was given 30 million euros from public funds (made up of 10 million euros each from the state, the Greater Paris region authorities and the Paris City Hall) and another 30 million euros from private-sector partners. In effect, the GIP was controlled by sports bodies; the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) and the French Paralympic and Sports Committee (CPSF) were together given 55% of voting rights within its board and general assembly, while the public partners (the state, Greater Paris region authorities and Paris City Hall) held 15% each, representing the remaining 45% of voting rights.

The sports bodies would show little effort in keeping the public informed of the GIP’s actions. While its spending was overseen by a state financial inspector, the detail of this was never made public. An internal document seen by Mediapart gives only an overall picture of its principal spending. The most costly outlay was on salaries. With a staff of around 50 (as estimated by financial daily La Tribune) the total that was paid in salaries over the period of less than three years that the GIP was active amounted to 14 million euros. The second most costly outlay was planning and studies, totalling about 12 million euros, followed by PR communications, at 10 million euros. “International Relations”, which notably included “intelligence and analysis”, was allocated almost 6 million euros.

There is a similar opacity surrounding the payment of bonuses. According to information given to Mediapart, a vote of the Paris 2024 executive committee on August 29th 2017 approved the attribution of “success bonuses” to be paid to staff. These were conditional on the IOC awarding the 2024 Olympic Games to Paris, along with achieving a financial surplus and the raising of 30 million euros from private funds. All three conditions were met. But the bonuses are a point of controversy, including among those closely involved in the bid, firstly because the “success” of the Paris bid was obtained in the absence of any competition after the withdrawal of Budapest, Hamburg and Rome and with Los Angeles content to go for the 2028 event. Secondly, a large number of those receiving the bonus will in all probability be re-employed in the different structures created for the organisation of the games. Lastly, but not least, the bonuses were calculated in proportion to the salaries of those concerned. While those paid to the collaborators who helped in their spare time at weekends and evenings are modest, the total will swell significantly with those paid to the senior members of the Paris 2024 team.  

Contacted by Mediapart, the GIP said the bonuses will total “12% of remunerations of all the staff, with a maximum ceiling fixed at three times the average value”. But it did not provide a table of the salaries in question nor did it clarify if the “remunerations” were monthly, yearly or those paid for the whole period of the project.

As of the moment the “Paris 2024” structure was created, Lapasset assigned his close allies to key posts. Besides Aloïsio, Lapasset appointed as managing director Étienne Thobois – who worked closely with him on France’s successful bid to host the 2007 rugby World Cup. In 2008, together with others involved in organising the 2007 rugby World Cup, founded Keneo, a firm specialized in the organisation of sporting events and which in ten years has become a dominant player in the market. In 2011, Keneo was commissioned by the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, the CNOSF, to prepare a report analyzing the last four failed French bids to host the Olympic Games. The report, to which was added a feasibility study commissioned by the CFSI and completed in February 2015, served as a roadmap for the Paris 2024 team. In the conclusions of the report, Keneo insisted on the need for a “sporting movement” which it said previous unsuccessful bids lacked and which should be an element of the candidature for 2024. A former sports ministry official, speaking on condition his name was withheld, described the report as “a big con” and that it contained a “very Anglo-Saxon logic, corresponding with Bernard Lapasset’s vision, and aimed at removing the public powers from decision-making”. 

The promised ascension of Tony Estanguet

With Thobois running the GIP, Keneo – by which time he had sold all his shares in the firm –    was given contracts worth a total of more than 2 million euros. In an article in French daily Le Monde, Thobois said he was hurt by the “controversy” caused by a report published earlier this month by Mediapart (in French, here) on his role in the Paris bid. “That someone whose job is to advise candidatures subsequently finds themselves at the head of a candidature is not abnormal,” he said. “It is even logical to not hire people who are disconnected from what you hire them for”. But for another former sports ministry official also interviewed on condition his name was withheld, “in sport, it’s always the same ones who are at the beginning and at the end”. In other words, those who provide study reports obtain the fruit of their recommendations.

This closed circuit is fed by the revolving-doors hiring at Keneo of former civil servants (from ministerial cabinets and local authorities), and notably Loïc Duroselle, previously in charge of “major sporting events” projects for prime minister Manuel Valls, who was appointed deputy managing director of the company.

In a summary of its report on the previous failed French bids for the games, Keneo underlined that “the leader of the [next] candidature is not from the ‘Olympics family’” and that it was necessary “to reinforce the presence of ‘sports people’ in the close entourage”. Tony Estanguet ticked all the right boxes to join the Lapasset-Thobois tandem. This three-time Olympics champion, the flag bearer for France at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, had also gained a flattering reputation as a shrewd operator since being elected to the IOC in July 2013.

This ideal profile allowed him to progressively take up his place at the head of “Paris 2024”, propelled by the French media as its starring leader. While Bernard Lapasset, who in 2024 will be aged 76, is set to be given the role of honorary president, Estanguet, who is now aged 39, is clearly intended to be the figurehead of the Paris games, just as former British track and field athlete Sebastian Coe was for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

There appears to be no doubt that Estanguet will be given the leadership of France’s Organisation Committee for the games, COJO. His entourage envisages the possibility that he will become head of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee whose current president, Denis Masseglia, will have left his post by 2024.

Alongside the COJO, the “Company for the Instalment of Olympics Equipment”, Solideo will be tasked with overseeing the building of infrastructures for the games. Paris' socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, may well step down from her post as president of Solideo given the risks of delays and budget overruns, a position which one well-informed source said offers “only a hammering” for the trouble.

“Anne Hidalgo will also be vice-president of the COJO,” said Jean-François Martins, in charge of sports at Paris City Hall, and who argues that cooperation between the different actors will be “easier” than during the early phase. “Each one will put their know-how at the service of their field of competence,” said Martins. The sports people will look after the sports side. Politicians will look after the development work. And we will have some common subjects, like environmental issues or the policies on tariffs concerning ticket sales.”

A third pole of the organisation, which will be in charge of deciding the use after the games of newly-built infrastructures, and also the support of a new generation of athletes who will take part in the games, is in the process of being created.

The exact division of responsibilities between the sports bodies, the state and the local authorities will only emerge with the final structure of this multi-headed administration, and importantly it will determine the weight of the public authorities in the decision-making process.

Another question is that of the relations with the IOC, whose interventionist approach is a source of potential tensions. When France last year hosted the European football championship, Euro 2016, the demands made by the European football governing body UEFA – notably that the organising bodies be exempt from paying any taxes other than VAT – remains controversial. “One must take proper measure of the fact that the IOC dreams of an Olympic Games ‘kit’, which can be moved from one country to another, notably in the hope of one day organising them in Africa,” commented a former French minister, whose name is withheld. “Therefore a balance of power must be established over certain aspects of the organisation.”

Another challenge, no less important, is that of mobilising public opinion in favour of the games. “It’s wrong to say that the French are, today, behind the Olympic Games,” said one source close to the Paris 2024 team. “We’re in a transitional phase. And on that issue, the games are far from being decided. Everything until now has been done in the shadows. The challenge for Tony Estanguet is now to convince [public] opinion that Paris 2024 is a good thing for France.”

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• The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse