Maltese officials among those named in London Games ticket probe

Six top Olympic officials from four countries have been implicated in the supplying of black market tickets for the London Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said. The illegal sale of tickets for the 2012 Games was initially uncovered by a British newspaper mid-June. It handed its  findings to the IOC ethics commission. The IOC's report released last night mentioned six people including Greek National Olympic Committee (NOC) president Spyros Capralos and his marketing chief Nicole Avramidou of breaching the IOC's code of conduct. Malta's NOC president Lino Farrugia Sacco and secretary general Joe Cassar were also implicated along with Serbia's NOC president Djordje Visacki and Lithuanian secretary general Vytautas Zubernis. (The Maltese officials have persistently denied any wrongdoing.) The IOC said however that the six could not be sanctioned under their rules. "The scope of the competence of the ethics code of the IOC allows the IOC to take an action against the body of the National committee, but for reasons due to legal issues, we have no authority on the people themself," explained IOC president Jacques Rogge. "We think it could be changed in the ethics code...