(Reuters) - A senior Ukrainian Olympic official accused of offering to sell London Games tickets on the black market was inebriated when he spoke to an undercover reporter and never planned to sell them, Ukraine's National Olympic Committee (NOC) said on Wednesday.
Volodymyr Gerashchenko, the general secretary, resigned last month after a BBC report which said he had offered to sell up to 100 tickets to a reporter posing as a buyer.
But NOC member Olga Zhukovskaya said Gerashchenko had been “in a state of inebriation” when he met the reporter.
Zhukovskaya told reporters the NOC has condemned Gerashchenko’s behaviour and will vote on his expulsion on June 22. But she said the former official had not been in a position to sell tickets.
“We have found out that Gerashchenko did not have the power to negotiate on such matters,” she said. “There are no left-over tickets and he had no access to ticket distribution.
“He agreed to that conversation (with the reporter), which he did not consider to be serious, in a state of inebriation,” Zhukovskaya said.
“He was talking about things he had no power to discuss.”
Gerashchenko, 56, has been in his post since 1997. The Ukraine Olympic Committee was allotted 2,900 tickets for distribution to various officials and groups. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Robert Woodward)
