Just days before the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation team comes to town the corporation which led the bid to win the 2010 Olympics has announced a surplus in its financial statements.
It has been recommended by Jack Poole, chairman of the Vancouver organizing committee, that the $573,000 surplus be turned over to the OCOG.
The financial statements have been expected for some months.
John McLaughlin, the bid’s vice-president of finance, said the hold up was due mostly to the juggling of responsibilities of those putting together the data.
There was also some pressure, in light of the bribery scandal of the Salt Lake Winter Games in 2002, that everything be checked and double-checked.
"We certainly wanted to do that, but we would do that normally," he said.
Along with the official financial statements a 37-page list of detailed expenditures was also made available.
"That is an extra chunk of work that would not normally happen," said McLaughlin.
"A private corporation certainly wouldn’t release anything like that."
It reveals some interesting information. For example the hotel bill for the trip to Prague, where Vancouver and Whistler were awarded the Games, was over $83,000.
And Callaghan Country gave in-kind services worth over $12,000 when Whistler was still an applicant city. When the IOC evaluation commission was here last time the bid spent $29,000 on a dinner at Seasons in the Park in Vancouver.
The statements show that the bid corporation generated just over $36 million in revenue. It spent $35.4 million. Included in the revenue was $18.2 million from the federal and provincial governments and a number of Crown corporations.
Most of the money spent went on staffing and selling the bid overseas. Legacies Now also received $4.8 million.
"We really spent money in three different areas," said McLaughlin.
"One was developing the whole technical plan, another was our domestic and internal communications and the third bit of work was what was done internationally."
Salaries of staff such as John Furlong, the recently appointed CEO of the Vancouver OCOG, are considered private, said McLaughlin and were not revealed.
"We won the bid, everything was done above board, and in accordance with the IOC, and we had some money left over," said McLaughlin.
"So we do hope it is a taste of things to come with the Games."
