International Olympic Committee Launches Whistleblower Hotline

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

The International Olympic Committee (“IOC”) this week launched its new Integrity and Compliance Hotline for whistleblowers to report competition manipulation and other ethical issues that threaten the integrity of sport.  Through the hotline, the IOC is looking to protect “clean athletes” by ferreting out any financial misconduct, such as match-fixing, and other legal, regulatory and ethical breaches over which the IOC has jurisdiction.

The hotline is open to anyone, from athletes, coaches, referees and the public, and guarantees anonymity.  IOC President Thomas Bach stressed that “the ultimate goal of all this is to protect the clean athletes and to give them, as far as we can, fair competition.”

The new hotline was announced at the OIC’s first International Forum for Sports Integrity which included representatives from world Governments, the Council of Europe, the European Union, INTERPOL, Europol, United Nations agencies, sports betting operators and Olympic Movement stakeholders.   In addition to the hotline, a number of other issues were discussed, including need for a robust regulatory framework based on global sports minimum standards in the form of a code, proactive and preventive education at international, national and local levels and raising awareness of the issues by local governments.

After the successful summit, Mr. Back remarked that he was “very happy with [the] meeting as a starting point for the establishment of the IOC Integrity and Compliance Hotline where athletes and everyone concerned can turn to the IOC” to report misconduct and corruption.  He added that anyone can call the hotline to “serve as whistleblowers and serve as witnesses with their suspicions about any kind of infringement.”

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