Olympics: Finance police raid Italy's Olympic Committee

TURIN - Finance police have raided the offices of Italy's Olympic organisers for records on the Turin committee's work, Olympic officials said on Thursday, as they faced yet another hurdle ahead of the 2006 Winter Games.

Last week, police searched a company handling funds and contracts for Olympic building works -- just after organisers had resolved a war of words over a huge gap in Turin's budget.

The president of Turin's Olympic Committee (Toroc), Valentino Castellani, said police swooped on his organisation's headquarters and made copies of several documents.

Coni, the national organising committee, issued a statement saying police had also asked it for files on the Turin team's activities.

Investigative sources said police had presented a search order citing "possible irregularities in the committee's management", adding the raids of Toroc and national committee Coni's centres in Turin and Rome were part of a probe by Turin prosecutors.

Castellani said the raid was not a criminal investigation.

"There is no hypothesis of an offence or anything," he told reporters at the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"It was an ordinary request for information...what reassures us is that they were not looking for anything specific," he said, adding that he did not know who had made a complaint.

Last week, police descended on Agenzia Torino 2006, a publicly funded company in charge of implementing the Turin committee's plans.

Sources close to the operation said the raid was part of an investigation into contracts awarded for the construction of roads before the Games.

However, media have described Turin's struggle as a political fight over power, with right-wing government officials needling Castellani, a former left-wing mayor of Turin.

Turin's current mayor Sergio Chiamparino, also from the centre-left, has previously defended Castellani but on Thursday was unavailable for comment.

A spokesman for the mayor described the raid as "an ugly matter".

Despite last week's raid and a row over a 186 million euro ($345.29 million) hole in the Olympic budget, Castellani has pledged to chair the organising committee through to the end of the Games, dropping earlier threats to resign.

Toroc is expected to approve the budget for the 2006 Games on December 21.

- REUTERS