Israeli Olympic ticket seller denies wrongdoing in sting

Israel’s official dealer for tickets to Olympic events denied Sunday that he had broken any rules, hours after a British newspaper report named him as one of 27 agents selling seats at inflated prices.

Former Olympic swimmer Yoav Bruck, who now runs Issta Sport, was named in the report by the Sunday Times as having offered to sell 525 seats for 66,000 pounds to reporters posing as representatives of a Middle Eastern ticket scalper.

Bruck is also the official ticket agent for Cyprus. Agents representing 54 countries were caught in the sting, according to the Sunday Times, leading the International Olympic Committee to launch a high level investigation into the claims Sunday.

“The report is swamped with untruths, lies and inventions that cries to the heavens,” Bruck told Channel 2. “I am saying that we are clean … we are not selling anything we are not allowed to.”

At issue are ticket allocations given by organizers to each of the 205 national Olympic committees to sell in their home countries. The committees appoint an organization within their countries to sell the tickets, a process meant to ensure equity.

IOC rules forbid national committees from selling tickets abroad, inflating ticket prices or selling tickets to unauthorized resellers.

The International Olympic Committee convened an emergency session Saturday to discuss the evidence presented to it by the Sunday Times.

One of the most damaging allegations was against Spyros Capralos, the Greek Olympic Committee president and top organizer for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

He was quoted as saying he had “pulled strings” with London organizing chairman Sebastian Coe to obtain an extra batch of premium tickets for official agents in Greece, on the pretext that demand in his country outstripped expectations.

The paper said Capralos acknowledged in talks with its undercover reporters that demand had actually been very low, and that many of the tickets were subsequently sold on to people outside Greece for profit.

The London organizing committee said Capralos’ alleged boasts of discussions with Coe were untrue.

Coe had told the Greek Olympic Committee that tickets were allocated in accordance with IOC ticketing policy, the London committee said.

“There was no further contact — either formal or informal — on this subject,” it said in a statement.

Capralos was not immediately available for comment. A Greek Olympic Committee official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, denied that anything untoward had taken place.

The paper posted on its website videos of its reporters’ negotiations with Capralos and some of the agents. They include official ticket agents in Serbia, Lithuania and China, who offered to sell the undercover reporters premium tickets for up to 6,000 pounds ($9,407) each.