SHOWDOWN IN RIO, RAGE IN MOUNTRATH
Minister jets in to quiz OCI boss …as court date finally called for alleged ticket tout
THE Dublin man at the centre of the Olympic ticket tout allegations is finally due to appear in court in Rio tomorrow.
Kevin Mallon, from Drimnagh in Dublin, faces being prosecuted under a 2003 law that prohibits tickets being sold for sporting events at a higher price than face value.
Anyone convicted of committing this offence can face up two years in prison and a fine of up to €450,000.
The news comes as Shane Ross prepares for a ‘showdown’ meeting with Olympic Council of Ireland boss Pat Hickey when he arrives in Brazil later today.
Relations between the Government and the sports supremo have become so fractious and tense over the alleged ticket touting and Michael O’Reilly doping controversies that the Sports Minister has declined to be met at the airport by the OCI chief, choosing instead to meet at a hotel.
Mr Mallon – a senior executive with corporate ticketing firm THG – was arrested at an apartment in the exclusive district of Barra da Tijuca with his translator Barbara Carnieri on the day of the Rio 2016 opening ceremony.
THG was previously warned that it did not have a contract to resell tickets for the Games.
According to local police chief Inspector Ricardo Barbosa, Mr Mallon was offering tickets for the opening ceremony for more than four times their face value. He also claimed the combined worth of the alleged illegal ticket sales could be as much as €3m.
Mr Mallon has been accused of conspiracy, illicit marketing and facilitating the touting of tickets while his interpreter is accused of illicit marketing.
THG has categorically denied any wrongdoing, as has the OCI. The OCI’s official ticket reseller Pro10 has said Mr Mallon was simply holding the tickets on its behalf to be collected by its customers.
Pro10 is now demanding an immediate public apology from the Rio 2016 organisers for seizing its tickets, which it claims has resulted in major commercial loss and has left clients without tickets.
Against this backdrop, the minister will meet Mr Hickey at Rio’s four-star Windsor Excelsior Hotel today in a bid to find out how tickets allocated to the OCI ended up in the hands of a THG representative.
A source revealed: ‘Pat Hickey wanted to meet the minister at the airport but the minister didn’t want a chummy, chummy media scrum, so he is going to meet him at the hotel where the minister is staying. Scandal: The seized tickets are displayed during a police press conference and, right, a scan of alleged ticket tout Kevin Mallon’s passport After 12 hours of travel he will be in really bad form and it’s going to be late. It will be midnight Irish time.
‘The OCI don’t seem to be accountable to anybody and the immediate problem is the inquiry that they’ve set up.
‘There is no independence and the minister will be asking him to remedy that.’
Rio police allege that Mr Mallon – who is not an employee of the authorised Irish ticket reseller – had 813 Olympic tickets in his possession when he was arrested last week.
THG is part of the Marcus Evans group owned by Ipswich Town owner Marcus Evans. The firm has been embroiled in previous international sporting event ticketing scandals, with accusations that it has charged massive mark-ups on tickets.
Last week Mr Hickey announced
‘Ross refused to let Pat Hickey meet him at the airport’ ‘OCI don’t seem to be accountable to anyone’
that the OCI was carrying out its own investigation into the alleged ticket touting affair. And he insisted that there had been ‘no impropriety whatsoever from anyone in the OCI’ as the Olympic council does not handle tickets.
Tickets for the Olympics are allocated to countries on the basis of population, sports proficiency and popularity of certain events. Each country then nominates a company to handle the sale of these tickets.
While it has been reported that it can take two to three years for a company to be approved as an Olympic ticket reseller, Pro10 told the Irish Mail on Sunday that it was appointed after only two months’ evaluation. It also revealed that it heard through word of mouth that the OCI was looking for a ticket agent and that it could not afford to send one of its own staff to Rio – although this was one of the stipulations when appointed Ireland’s authorised ticket seller.
A spokesman for Pro10 explained: ‘Kevin Mallon was acting as a representative on behalf of Pro10 as a collection point for tickets. He was not being paid by Pro10.
‘They did not have a representative in Rio as it transpired Mr Mallon would be there and this could be facilitated through him as opposed to incurring a large financial loss to send someone to Rio for three weeks.’
The spokesman added: ‘Pro10 heard about the opportunity through word of mouth in the industry. Pro10 prepared a contract and financial agreement and submitted it to the OCI for consideration.’
Fine Gael Dublin TD Noel Rock said last night that the explanations given by Pro10 raised more questions than answers.
He said: ‘They did not have someone on the ground to dispatch tickets and this does not fulfil the stipulation.
‘Distributing over 800 tickets to people would take a fair amount of time and effort, so it is firstly hard to believe he was doing this without remuneration from Pro10. Secondly, it is hard to understand why Mr Mallon was even there given THG has in the past been told explicitly that it has no rights to sell any Olympic tickets on behalf of any national agency.
‘More than half of the events involving Irish athletes have now passed. Yet despite the tickets being confiscated, nobody has come forward having been put out, so far as I am aware. This would lead one to believe that they had not been sold at all.’
An England-based PR guru, who acts for Mr Hickey, did not reply to questions from the MOS last night.
‘Pro10 could not afford to send staff to Rio’