VANCOUVER, Feb 7 (AFP) – Former Samsung chief Lee Kun-Hee was reinstated as an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member on Sunday despite a conviction for tax evasion.
Lee, 67, who voluntarily gave up his rights and duties as an IOC member in 2008 following his conviction, was pardoned by Korean President Lee Myung-Bak in December with the move seen as a means of helping PyeongChang's bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.
His reinstatement as a member of the IOC, for which no reason was given, came after a meeting of the body's executive board on the sidelines of the 2010 Winter Olympics which get underway here on Friday.
But an IOC spokesman made clear that Lee had violated crucial principles of the organisation.
"Lee received the strongest sanction. He violated ethical principles and tarnished the reputation of the Olympic movement," an IOC spokesman said here on Sunday, adding that the IOC ethics commission had issued a reprimand and suspended the Korean from a right to sit on any IOC commission for five years.
Despite his reinstatement, which came after a recommendation from the ethics commission, Lee will have no further responsibilities within the movement.
Meanwhile, a disciplinary committee has been set up following the admission by Crystal Cox, who was a member of the victorious US 4x400m women's relay squad at the 2004 Athens Olympics, that she had doped from late 2001 through 2004.
Cox, who ran in the relay heats only in Athens, admitted using anabolic agents and hormones.
The setting-up of the committee could eventually see Cox stripped of her gold medal.
The spokesman added that so far 218 drug tests had been carried out at the Vancouver Olympics - 181 urine and 37 blood samples - and that around 2,000 tests in total were expected to be conducted before the Games close on February 28.
