A federal prosecutor looking into last year's Rio de Janeiro Olympics has said that many of the venues "are white elephants" that were built with "no planning."
The scathing report offered on Monday at a public hearing confirms what The Associated Press reported several months after the games ended. Many of the venues are empty, boarded up and have no tenants or income with the maintenance costs dumped on the federal government.
"There was no planning," Federal Prosecutor Leandro Mitidieri told the public hearing on the Olympics.
Rio de Janeiro spent about $12 billion to organise the games, which were plagued by cost-cutting, poor attendance, and reports of bribes and corruption linked to the building of some Olympic-related facilities.
Patricia Amorim, the Undersecretary for sports in the city of Rio, said highly publicised plans were on hold to dismantle one arena and turn the remains into four schools. The arena was the venue for handball.
Nine months after the Rio Olympics ended, the local organising committee still owes creditors about $30 million, and 137 medals awarded during the games are rusting and need to be repaired.
Former Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, the moving force with the International Olympic Committee behind organising last year's Olympics, is being investigated for allegedly accepting at least 15 million reals ($5 million) in payments to facilitate construction projects tied to the games.
He denies any wrongdoing.
Organising committee spokesman Mario Andrada said more than 100 medals awarded at the Olympics showed signs of rusting. He said many were bronze medals, and said many of the tarnished medals had been awarded to Americans.
He said the medals would be repaired at Brazil's mint called the Casa da Moeda.
He said more than 2,000 medals were awarded at the Olympics and said "several other games had problems with medals."
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