National Image over Justice: A story of biases in French Olympics

When we are talking about the international sporting events, the most-awaited event of the Olympics is as important as it can get and getting to host such a big event can provide you a big boost as a country both economically and socially. Right after France was picked as the host nation for the 2024 Olympics by the International Olympics Committee the preparations for the Paris Olympics 2024 began, and obviously this involved a handsome amount of money. In these types of situations there is always influence peddling because everyone wants to take advantage of such a situation, and the very same thing happened in France.

The financial prosecutor, mindful of the global importance of the event and terming it as a “universal party”, carried the corruption investigations and the allegations regarding favouritism, illegal interest-taking, and contracts distribution in a very formal way. Although the French police raided and carried out a search of the Paris Olympics 2024 organizing committee headquarters as part of the preliminary investigations of the uprooting national scandal which has the potential to grow into a global one. The Paris Olympics corruption investigations hold a very vital position in terms of France and its global image because the Olympics are watched all over the world and the international media also pays great attention to even the minute details regarding the event. In such a scenario the comments like “the smooth running of the event” coming out of the Prosecutor’s office certainly create doubts in the minds of the international media as well as the international community. Any normal person in this situation is forced to think that there may be ambiguities or the embezzlement of the public funds in the organising committee headquarters that the financial prosecutor is hiding just for the sake of positive public image.

The prosecutor clearly mentioned that “It’s not up to us to come and disrupt that order and that’s why we started early enough. The searches that took place were carried out more than a year before the start of the Games.” It can be inferred from this statement although there may be discrepancies of the public funds even though at a minor level, some sort of contract distributions that are not done purely on merit, favouritism granted on behalf of the organising committee headquarters, or even the illegal interest-taking but all of this is overshadowed by the fact that this is a global tournament and if such findings are made public then this can cause a very serious dent to the global image of France. Also, the Paris organizers do not want any end minute drama in the form of arrests being carried out during the Olympics as they want the event to run smoothly and carry out the objectives that are being set by them.

France is already under immense pressure from the global community, especially the international media for its racist and discriminatory policies that it has towards its minority population, especially the migrants who come to France for a better future. In order to clean slate for itself and present itself to the world as a soft and sports loving nation France is trying the best it can to host the event in such a way that can make people forget everything from the past and see France through a new and fresh lens. Although looking at the global arena and how sports shape perceptions of the people around the world and the everlasting effects that it leaves on the people, this strategy by France is a viable one. But on the other hand, the scandals that erupted, are still erupting and that may erupt before the start of this global star event can further malign the French image in the global arena. Moreover, the investigations that were carried out to curb these misdoings were also not impartial on the behalf of the Chief Financial Prosecutor as he was wrongly putting the reputation of the country before justice without understanding that this might sprung a further debate in the international media regarding the image of France. With the helplessness of the Prosecutor Office, it was clear that their judgements were clouded and someone from above is pulling the strings which is the reason for the biasedness.