No peeking: VANOC hiding finances until the fall

VANOC has stopped issuing quarterly reports, which is contrary to the pledge made in November 2002’s Multiparty
Agreement. It said, should Vancouver win the Games, the organizing committee “will provide the parties with quarterly updates to the business plan within 60 days after the end of each quarter of each fiscal year, including forecasts of revenues and expenses."

CEO John Furlong said the rapidly shrinking VANOC workforce has no time to do reports anymore. Its last was for the quarter ended Oct. 31, 2009. The next and final report is coming in October.

“We’re in a completely different frame of mind, we’re trying to reconcile everything, we don’t have the time for that now,” he said after an April 16 Vancouver Board of Trade speech. “We need to get everything sorted out, you’ll get a full final report.

“We’re down to the smallest team we can have, we need to get out of business so that we have the best financial legacy that we can. Our team is infinitely smaller, we don’t have the resources we had through the Games to do that.”

The Games were a creative success that looked spectacular on TV. Even Mother Nature allowed the sun to shine for several days. But VANOC isn’t willing to let the sun shine on its financial figures until the fall. Until then, we can only speculate on the size of the International Olympic Committee and British Columbia government bailouts to make the books balance.

When we peel back the curtain, we’ll find that the recession made this the least successful Games since Montreal 1976.