IOC opens whistleblower hotline

The implementation of Agenda 2020 took another step onwards this week when the IOC hosted a 'First International Forum for Sports Integrity' in Lausanne with the participation of a select group of stakeholder representatives including the European Council, the European Union, Interpol, Europol, UN agencies and others.

According to the press release issued about the forum, measures to protect and support clean athletes were at the centre of discussions. Informative and educational programmes will be one of the means used by the IOC to ensure clean athletes as will transnational cooperation on investigative work and intelligence gathering. The forum further urged governments to sign the European Council’s Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions to ensure a ‘robust regulatory framework’.

A whistleblower hotline was also announced as one of the new initiatives in the reforming IOC. The ‘Integrity and compliance hotline’ will take reports on suspicions of match-fixing, financial misconduct or other breaches of the IOC ethics code. The IOC guaranties anonymity. 

IOC indemnities released

In another step towards making the organisation more transparent and accountable, the IOC recently decided to make the indemnities allocated for both the IOC executive members and the IOC president public. In the communique about the decision the IOC ethics commission encourages all national and international federations to do the same to ensure greater transparency. 

According to the IOC, its members receive a daily indemnity of USD 450 for meeting and other missions, commission chiefs and executive committee members get twice this amount. In addition to this, an annual support of 7.000 USD is provided to the IOC members.

Because the IOC president Thomas Bach, is “on a mission for the IOC 365 days a year” as the IOC writes, his indemnity is calculated otherwise:

"The President will receive neither the fixed annual support nor the daily indemnity related to all commission meetings or other missions that he is entitled to as IOC member," says the communique from the IOC.

"Instead of this, to cover some of the President's personal costs related to the execution of his function, the ethics commission is fixing a single annual fixed amount linked to inflation of Euro 225,000 -- as indemnity."