Features
Olympic Stadium Mess Gets Messier
The battle over London’s Olympic Stadium got even messier as corporate investigators hired by Tottenham Hotspur discovered an Olympic Park Legacy Company exec was also on West Ham’s payroll.
The Sunday Times reported that the Hammers paid Dionne Knight, the OPLC’s director of corporate services, nearly £13,000 for “consultancy work.”
At the beginning of the year the OPLC recommended West Ham should have the future use of the venue, which was ratified by the UK government March 3.
That process is already the subject of legal challenges from Tottenham and Leyton Orient, another London soccer club that had showed interest in the venue.
Their initial requests for a judicial review were knocked back by the High Court June 23, but six days later both clubs said they’d be appealing that decision.
There may be even further litigation if West Ham carries out its threat to hit Spurs and The Sunday Times with libel writs.
Either way, the Sunday paper’s revelations and the documentary evidence it claims to have seen indicate that West Ham was paying an executive of the organisation charged with running the bidding process.
The OPLC has suspended Knight but denied she had any involvement in the stadium bid selection and that “robust measures” had been in place to ensure the process was fair.