The AP Interview: Olympics boss vows Paris Games will be safe, says no resignations planned in probe [V4]

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The head of the embattled Paris Olympics in 2024 says he’s bracing for intense scrutiny and criticism as French police investigate Games-related contracts but defiantly insists they bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have for decades dogged the Olympic movement’s flagship money-spinning event. (June 29) (AP video: Alex Turnbull, Oleg Cetinic)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet pauses during an interview with the Associated Press gestures during an interview at the headquarters of Paris 2024 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet looks around during an interview with the Associated Press in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet poses for a photo during an interview with the Associated Press at the headquarters of Paris 2024 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Estanguet who won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games is now the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games. In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Estanguet talks about the two French police probes into Olympic-related contracts, and insists they bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning event for decades. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet pauses during an interview with the Associated Press at the headquarters of Paris 2024 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Estanguet who won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games is now the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games. In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Estanguet talks about the two French police probes into Olympic-related contracts, and insists they bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning event for decades. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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FILE - Tony Estanguet of France bites his Olympic gold medal after winning the final of the C-1 men’s canoe slalom at Lee Valley Whitewater Center, at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, July 31, 2012, in Waltham Cross near London. Estanguet who won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games is now the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games. In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Estanguet talks about the two French police probes into Olympic-related contracts, and insists they bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning event for decades. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

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FILE - Tony Estanguet carries the flag of France during the opening ceremonies for the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Friday, Aug. 8, 2008. Estanguet who won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games is now the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games. In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Estanguet talks about the two French police probes into Olympic-related contracts, and insists they bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning event for decades. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, File)

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FILE - Tony Estanguet of France competes in the heats of the C-1 men’s canoe slalom at Lee Valley Whitewater Center, at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Sunday, July 29, 2012, in London. Estanguet who won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games is now the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games. In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Estanguet talks about the two French police probes into Olympic-related contracts, and insists they bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning event for decades. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet gestures during an interview with the Associated Press at the headquarters of Paris 2024 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Estanguet who won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games is now the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games. In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Estanguet talks about the two French police probes into Olympic-related contracts, and insists they bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning event for decades. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet gestures during an interview with the Associated Press in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet gestures during an interview with the Associated Press at the headquarters of the Paris Olympic organizers in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet pauses during an interview with the Associated Press in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet smiles during an interview with the Associated Press in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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Paris 2024 Olympics Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet prepares for an interview with the Associated Press at the headquarters of Paris 2024 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

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By JOHN LEICESTER

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — What was shaping up as a regular workday turned out to be anything but for the organizers of France’s first summer Olympic Games in a century.

French anti-corruption police raided their bustling Olympic headquarters on the outskirts of Paris, arriving unannounced and accompanied by a magistrate from a French financial crimes prosecution unit that has made a habit of going after sports’ rogues.

This time, they were zeroing in on twenty or so of the many hundreds of business contracts that Olympic organizers have signed as they race to prepare the French capital for 10,500 athletes and millions of spectators next year. The investigators were hunting for documents and information as they dig into suspicions of favoritism, conflicts of interest, and misuse of some of the billions of euros (dollars) being sunk into the Paris Games that open July 26, 2024.

Tony Estanguet, a former Olympic canoeing star with gold medals from the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Games, was at work in the Olympic HQ when police came knocking last week. The trim 45-year-old is the face and chief organizer of the Paris Games, presiding over a rapidly growing workforce whose preparations were progressing largely smoothly before investigators arrived with a judge’s warrant.

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“It’s the first time this has happened to us, so we were surprised,” Estanguet says. “We said, ‘Yes, of course, take all the information you need.’”

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“I am cooperating. There will surely be other stages. We’ll surely have to reply to more questions. There will be more checks right up to the end, perhaps even after the Games,” he acknowledges. “So I am ready for that and I know that it is part of this kind of adventure. We’ll be inspected intensely, criticized hugely.”

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, the Paris 2024 president vigorously defended colleagues whose homes also were searched. The two senior organizing committee executives for now face no allegations and are being looked at because they were involved in business decisions, Estanguet says. “There’s no question of envisaging” their resignation “for the moment,” he adds.

Estanguet insists that the two financial probes of Paris Games contract awards bear no comparison with corruption and ethics scandals that have for decades dogged the Olympic movement and its flagship money-spinning event, including the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and Rio de Janeiro’s bribery-plagued Games of 2016.

“It’s unfair to say that we’re like the others,” he says. “Unfortunately, things went off course in the past and I think we’re all being lumped together a bit, although I can tell you that we’re being very careful and everyone here has to be very careful because there is no room for error.”

In the hour-long AP interview, Estanguet also addressed other issues crucial to the success of the first Olympics to host spectators again after the COVID-19 pandemic:

— Security preparations for the groundbreaking opening ceremony on July 26 will turn Paris into “the safest place in the world,” he boldly predicts. Instead of a traditional stadium ceremony, Paris intends to showcase its iconic monuments with a waterborne extravaganza on a 6-kilometer (3 1/2-mile) stretch of the cleaned-up River Seine. Hundreds of thousands of spectators will mostly watch for free in the heart of the French capital, where Islamic extremists attacked twice in 2015, killing 147 people, including outside the national stadium.

“If you want to be safe, come to Paris for the opening ceremony,” Estanguet says.

— With just a year to go, Paris still has a lot of unfinished work, and that’s fine, he says. “There are lots of things that aren’t ready. But that’s normal. I used to be a top-level athlete. It’s never good to be ready a year beforehand ... You have to be ready on gameday and arrive with the feeling that you’re not quite ready. That way you fight, cling on, give everything to really be at your best,” he says.

The probes led by France’s financial prosecution service — the first opened in 2017, the second in 2022 — threaten to hang over organizers for the duration of the July-August Olympics and the Paralympic Games that follow into September. Investigators expect to spend months sifting through documents recovered in their searches of the Paris 2024 offices, the homes of Etienne Thobois, its director general, and Edouard Donnelly, executive director of operations. They also searched the HQ of the company delivering Olympic infrastructure, Solideo, and homes of some of its staff, according to a judicial official with knowledge of the investigations who wasn’t authorized to discuss them publicly.

The official said the Paris court that would hear any case, if the prosecutors’ probes get that far, also has no room on its calendar to hold a trial before September 2024.

Investigators do not suspect that bribes were paid or received, drawing a sharp distinction with the corruption probes that ensnared Tokyo and Rio, the official said. Instead, two police units that fight financial criminality are investigating about 20 Olympic-related contracts — some worth less than 1 million euros — for suspected violations of French laws governing conflicts of interest, contract dealings and use of public funds, the official said.

Estanguet acknowledges that with an event so big and costly, it’s a constant battle to keep tabs on everyone working to make it happen.

He detailed multiple layers of internal and external checks, including continuous scrutiny by state auditors, that he and other Olympic organizers work under in dealing with service providers and in handling their budget of 4.38 billion euros (US$4.8 billion) — one of the largest chunks of the overall Paris Games spending approaching 9 billion euros. Paris 2024 says it has signed contracts with more than 1,500 companies so far.

No Paris 2024 employee awards contracts alone, “the decision is always collective,” Estanguet says.

“From the outset, we’ve been very careful because we know we’re watched and we know we’re accountable. And vis-à-vis the French, we have this duty to be exemplary. Me, I have my image,” says the former athlete who at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was chosen to carry France’s tricolor flag.

“I believe in sport. It changed my life. I want to show that sport will change this country and that sport will be a success. And I don’t want this adventure to be remembered as having been badly managed.”

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Paris chief correspondent John Leicester has covered eight summer and winter Olympics for AP. More AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Olympic Hightlights

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FILE - South Africa’s Jacques Freitag competes in the men’s high jump of the 2004 Olympic Games, in the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Friday Aug. 20, 2004. Local media is reporting that South African police have discovered the body of former high jump world champion Jacques Freitag after he went missing last month. The reports said the 42-year-old, who won the 2003 world title in Paris and competed at the 2004 Olympics, had been shot. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

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FILE - Ilona Maher of USA is tackled by Sharni Williams of Australia in a semifinal of the Rugby World Cup 7’s championship held in Cape Town, South Africa, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022. The main task for Maher, the breakout social media star on TikTok at the Tokyo Olympics, is winning a medal in Paris. (AP Photo/Halden Krog, File)

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FILE - Jacques Freitag of South Africa waves his national flag after he won the Men’s high jump event at the World Athletics Championships, at the Stade de France in Saint Denis, north of Paris, Monday, Aug. 25, 2003. Local media is reporting that South African police have discovered the body of former high jump world champion Jacques Freitag after he went missing last month. The reports said the 42-year-old, who won the 2003 world title in Paris and competed at the 2004 Olympics, had been shot. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle, File)

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Sammy Sullivan of USA in action during HSBC rugby sevens series in Singapore, on May 4, 2024. The anthem played as Army officer Sammy Sullivan stood to attention and saluted beside her U.S. rugby teammates before a gold-medal game in Hong Kong against Olympic champion New Zealand. No prizes for guessing where her mind may have drifted to: Paris in July. (AP Photo/Suhaimi Abdullah)

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USA Water Polo Women’s Senior National Team attacker Ryann Neushul, left, trains at Long Beach City College Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024, in Long Beach, Calif. Following in the footsteps of two older sisters who won gold with the U.S. women’s water polo team, Ryann Neushul is making her Olympic debut in Paris this summer. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

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Iranian wrestler Iman Mahdavi, 28, practices at the Lotta Club Seggiano gym, in Pioltello , northern Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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FILE - Steven van de Velde of the Netherlands competes during the CEV Beach Volley Nations Cup Vienna 2022 men’s semifinal game against Austria at the Red Bull Beach Arena in Vienna, Austria, Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. Van de Velde, convicted and imprisoned eight years ago for raping an underage girl in England has qualified for the Paris Olympics. (AP Photo/Florian Schroetter, File)