Rio Olympic planning assailed for ‘white elephant’ venues

A federal prosecutor looking into last year’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics says that many of the venues “are white elephants” that were built with “no planning.”

Many of the venues are empty, boarded up, and have no tenants or income with the maintenance costs dumped on the federal government.

“There was no planning,” federal prosecutor Leandro Mitidieri told the public hearing on the Olympics. “There was no planning when they put out the bid to host the Games. No planning. They are white elephants today,” Mitidieri added. “What we are trying to look at here is to how to turn this into something usable.”

Rio de Janeiro spent about $12 billion to organize the games, which were plagued by cost-cutting, poor attendance, and reports of bribes and corruption linked to the building of some Olympic-related facilities.