Papers Back Gosper Claim

Influential IOC member R. Kevan Gosper of Australia insisted on paying all costs of his family’s 1993 Utah vacation, according to documents obtained by The Times that also raise questions about the accounting behind Salt Lake City’s scandal-tainted winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

The documents emerged even as Dick Pound, the International Olympic Committee vice president who led the IOC’s internal inquiry commission last year into the scandal, said his panel had investigated the 1993 trip--as well as Gosper’s official 1995 visit to Salt Lake City--and found nothing improper.

Pound, a Montreal attorney, said Gosper was a victim of “entrapment,” adding, “These records we were seeing from Salt Lake--you can’t rely on them at all.”

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman, asked if prosecutors are looking closely at the books, declined comment. The department is investigating the possibility of criminal wrongdoing connected to the bid.

Gosper, also an IOC vice president and one of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch’s top aides, was dragged Monday into the spotlight after managing to stay above the fray for the last year--during which 10 IOC members were expelled or resigned amid disclosures of more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements from bidders in Salt Lake City.

Early Monday, British journalist Andrew Jennings released e-mails showing he’d asked Gosper why a Salt Lake bid spreadsheet details more than $31,000 in expenses under Gosper’s name for the 1993 and 1995 trips.

Gosper denied wrongdoing, accused the bid team of submitting inflated expense claims and referred the matter to the newly formed IOC ethics commission.

The 1993 trip involves Gosper’s wife, Judy, and two children, then ages 8 and 4. They stopped in Salt Lake City while returning to Australia from London.

Gosper says his wife covered expenses by sending a $2,000 check to Salt Lake upon her return to Australia. Tom Welch, then the bid chief, has since resigned and his lawyer declined comment Wednesday.

Gosper has insisted the trip was not at bid committee expense. Documents obtained by The Times back that assertion.

“Judy and myself are immensely relieved,” Gosper said today by phone from Australia upon a review of the documents.

In a Nov. 9, 1993, letter to Gosper, Welch confirms “the understanding” that the trip is a “personal visit, and that all costs . . . are being paid by you.” The nightly rate at the Deer Valley resort, Welch advises, will be $375.

But a Nov. 4 internal bid committee memo, which notes that Gosper “is adamant about paying for his lodging,” says, “Please have the lodge prepare an invoice for him reflecting an amount of $275 per night.”

It goes on: “Also, in preparing the room, any evidence of what it truly cost to rent the lodge should be removed.”

The spreadsheet says Deer Valley was cut a $2,730 check Nov. 9 and a $5,396 check Nov. 23.

Also at issue is Gosper’s official IOC visit to Salt Lake City in 1995.

After a meeting in Atlanta, he and his wife traveled to Salt Lake City--the rules then in effect allowed her to go with him. The spreadsheet details more than $21,000 in air fare.

In a March 8, 1995, letter to Welch, Gosper says that his ticket “will be covered” by the IOC and the city of Melbourne, Australia. At the time, Gosper was a top Melbourne official.

The letter also says the Gospers planned to fly back to Australia via Japan, where he had Melbourne city business; it says Gosper will reimburse the bid committee for the extra cost of flying his wife to Japan rather than straight home from the United States.

Documents obtained by The Times show that Gosper paid 3,750 Swiss francs, about $2,270, for the side trip through Japan, and that the remaining 9,711 Swiss francs, about $5,855, was split between the IOC and the bid committee.

The spreadsheet makes no note of any such reimbursement or of such a split.