Ted Stevens outside the courthouse in Washington, D.C.(ATR) The U.S. senator who led the passage of federal legislation governing the Olympics in the United States could be headed to prison following his conviction on corruption charges.
Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, was found guilty of charges he failed to report the true value of work on his home carried out by a contractor. Prosecutors say Stevens tried to hide $250,000 worth of improvements to the property. Stevens says he believed the work in Alaska was covered by $160,000 he paid to the contractor.
Stevens, 84, is the fourth most senior member of the U.S. Senate. He is not required to resign from the Senate, but could be expelled. All of this may be moot in a week: he is not favored to win re-election on Nov. 4.
In 1998 Stevens was the leader in Congress for the current version of the law governing the Olympics in the U.S. Now called the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, the law spells out the authority of the U.S. Olympic Committee over national governing bodies for sports. The law also establishes the USOC as the guardian of Olympic trademarks in the U.S.
Stevens’ conviction has no connection with his past involvement on behalf of the Olympics.
But there is some sense of irony now over the intervention made by Stevens in 2003 when the USOC was ensnared in a leadership crisis. Stevens took part in a senate hearing and spoke to the USOC staff en masse in Colorado Ted Stevens (center) took part in a 2003 senate hearing on the USOC, chaired by John McCain, to Stevens’ right. (ATR)Springs.
''It touches on criminal activity, but I'm not sure we can verify it,'' is how Stevens was quoted from the closed-door speech in a news report. Stevens was referring to the management of the USOC, which had lurched from one CEO to another.
Those complaints came three years after work he had done on his Alaska home made him a convicted criminal in the eyes of a federal jury. Stevens will be sentenced in early 2009; fines and time in prison are likely, as is an appeal.
Written by
Ed Hula
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