Separate investigations are expected to open today after it emerged that an Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) executive was paid £20,000 by West Ham United as the club fought Tottenham Hotspur for control of the £537 million Olympic Stadium.
The OPLC is due to announce an independent review into the process by which it named West Ham as preferred bidder to take control of the stadium after the 2012 Games. Dionne Knight, the woman at the centre of the latest dispute, also faces an internal investigation after failing to tell her bosses of her consultancy work for West Ham.
The OPLC voted unanimously to award the Olympic Stadium to West Ham, who pledged to keep the athletics track, but news of the club’s payments to Knight, along with Tottenham’s attempts to gain a judicial review into the decision, have clouded the issue. In addition, West Ham are vowing to report Tottenham to the police for tapping phones and illegally accessing bank accounts.
The independent review will look at whether the OPLC board could have been compromised, while the internal investigation will focus on whether Knight could have passed on information that could have benefited West Ham’s bid. She has been suspended on full pay, pending the outcome of the investigation. Her boyfriend, Ian Tompkins, the West Ham director who drove their bid, has been suspended by the club.
An OPLC insider last night said it was “not a happy picture” and it could yet prove one that ends London’s attempt to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships.
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UK Athletics must lodge a formal bid by September 1 and its chairman, Ed Warner, said: “It was always going to be a marathon not a sprint and it will go down to the wire.”
So far London, Doha and an unnamed Spanish city have lodged letters of intent. However, there are fears that the latest bad publicity, combined with Tottenham heading to the High Court for an oral hearing into the OPLC’s choice, has now tipped the balance in the Qatari capital’s favour.
London withdrew its bid for the 2015 World Championships at the eleventh hour because of uncertainty over the fate of the Olympic Stadium.
That angered some at the IAAF, athletics’ governing body, where many still remember when the Government reneged on a manifesto commitment to host the World Championships in 2005. Warner said he still believed the fight for the stadium could be resolved soon and enable London to bid with confidence. He said: “I don’t think this damages the bid at all.”