After the announcement this morning of an investigation by the courts into his remuneration terms, the president of the Paris Games organizing committee defended himself.
Published: 02/06/2024 9:27 p.m.
Updated: 02/06/2024 9:31 p.m.
Reading time: 1 min
Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committee, on November 28, 2022. (JOAO LUIZ BULCAO / AFP)
In the eye of the media storm since this morning and the revelation of an investigation by the courts into its remuneration terms, Tony Estanguet gave his reaction. On the sidelines of the inauguration of the Annette Kellerman swimming pool in La Courneuve, near Paris, the boss of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games explained that he “did not decide on his remuneration or its framework.”
“I trust what was decided at the time of my appointment” in 2018, he assured some journalists who came to question him. “I learned this morning that there would be an investigation,” continued the three-time Olympic canoe champion (2000, 2004, 2012), explaining: “The system that was decided at the time was that I could not be salaried and that an ad hoc structure had to be created that invoices the organizing committee each month.”
Estanguet refers to a remuneration committee that has existed since the creation of the Cojop.
The investigation against him was entrusted to the judicial police last week. For its part, the Organizing Committee of the Games (Cojop) said it was “astonished” at the opening of this investigation, arguing that the remuneration of the former athlete “was decided and validated by the first board of directors of the Organizing Committee on March 2,2018, which ruled in his absence, sovereign and independent.”
“Since the beginning of the creation of the Organizing Committee, there has been a remuneration committee with independent experts, a board of directors that have taken position, there are also the services of the State, and a general economic and financial control of Bercy who supervised my level of remuneration, the status of my remuneration”, explained Tony Estanguet, aged 45. And to conclude: “We will make ourselves available, as we have done from the start, to answer the questions that will be asked of us.”
