? 95-year-old Brazilian quits after 48 years on IOC
? Ethics commission set to deliver investigation verdict
The former Fifa president Jo�o Havelange has resigned from the International Olympic Committee just days before, according to insiders, he was due to be suspended by an ethics commission investigation into a long-running bribery scandal.
It is understood that Havelange, the IOC's longest serving member and one of the most influential figures in world sport over several decades, submitted his resignation late last week. It followed an exchange of correspondence with the ethics commission over claims in a BBC documentary that he received a $1m kickback from the now defunct sports marketing company ISL.
The 95-year-old Brazilian, an IOC member for 48 years and the Fifa president for 24 years until he helped smooth the path for Sepp Blatter to succeed him in 1998, had been due to hear his fate on Thursday when the ethics commission's findings were scheduled to be considered by the IOC executive board.
The case against him is now expected to be closed but it is understood that he was due to receive a two-year suspension after the ethics commission examined the evidence provided by the BBC and conducted its own inquiries.
Two other IOC members under investigation, the Fifa executive committee member and Confederation of African Football president, Issa Hayatou, and the International Association of Athletics Federations president, Lamine Diack, are expected to be admonished but escape suspension when their cases are considered this week. The pair were not IOC members at the time the alleged bribes were paid.
The BBC's Panorama claimed Hayatou received about $20,000 from ISL in 1995. He has denied any corruption and said the money was a gift for his confederation.
According to the list obtained by the programme, Diack received a total of $41,500 in three separate tranches. He said he received money after his house in Senegal burned down in 1993 and has denied any impropriety.
The IOC investigation was launched the day after the documentary aired in December last year, just before the 2018/2022 World Cup vote in Zurich.
It claimed that a newly acquired document detailed 175 payments made by ISL between 1989 and 1999, totalling $100m. The company collapsed in 2001. ISL was believed to have made the payments to oil the wheels of its network of television and marketing contracts. The senior Fifa executives Nicolas Leoz and Ricardo Teixeira, who is close to Havelange and head of Brazil's 2014 World Cup organising committee, are also alleged to appear on the list.
Teixeira, Havelange's former son-in-law, is alleged to have received $9.5m through a Liechtenstein company, Sanud, with which he was linked, by a 2001 Brazilian senate investigation. He denies the allegations.
When the claims emerged, Fifa immediately claimed the matter was already closed, pointing to a court case in the Swiss canton of Zug last June when its lawyers paid 5.5m Swiss francs to settle a civil case and have the files sealed.
But the IOC said it would investigate the trio of people named who were among its membership ? Havelange, Hayatou and Diack ? and referred the matter to its ethics commission. The BBC cooperated by providing documents and other evidence.
The release of a document said to detail the alleged bribes has twice been blocked by Fifa, most recently on 24 May, a week before its congress at which corruption allegations threatened to overwhelm it. Blatter has now promised to release the files relating to the ISL case and has said he will begin the process of delivering them to "an independent organisation outside of Fifa" at its next executive committee meeting later this month in Tokyo.
However, much scepticism continues to surround the form and timing of the release and the motives behind his wider "roadmap" for reform of Fifa.
Havelange is the first member to resign from the Olympic body in an ethics case since the former IOC vice-president Kim Un-yong of South Korea stepped down in 2005 rather than face expulsion. Kim had been previously suspended in connection with corruption charges in South Korea.
The IOC president, Jacques Rogge, elected in 2001 in the wake of the fallout from the Salt Lake City bribery scandal that led to four resignations and six expulsions from the IOC, has consistently promised to take a tough line on corruption within the organisation.
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