Authorities have dismantled an agency selling unauthorized tickets to the Olympics, effectively leaving thousands of people who bought the tickets no entry to watch the games.
The Office of Fair Trading said approximately 20,000 tickets to the London Olympics were sold via Norway-based Euroteam, with around 15,000 of them being sold through unofficial sources, reported The Independent.
Norwegian authorities stopped a Polish man at the airport in Oslo who had 455 tickets from one Olympic Committee, leading to an investigation. The man was charged with fraud because the tickets were intended for use only by their official recipients.
Many seats have ended up empty as tickets issued to sponsors, national committees, and friends go unused. The tickets, marked “not for resale,” often end up being sold illegally.
“What has happened is that representatives of some Olympic committees have sold tickets outside their country, and probably earned a lot of money on this. It is strictly illegal, and it is a scandal,” Norwegian Olympic Committee member Gerhard Heiberg was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
Norwegian police spokesperson Joo Arne Maana told Reuters that some of the “tickets we have seized come from Russia and Belarus” and they “were issued especially to Russia and Belarus and they are marked as ‘not for resale.'”
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