爲與李寧競爭 耐克涉嫌賄賂肯尼亞田聯

NAIROBI, Kenya — When a Chinese clothing company swooped in and offered to sponsor Kenya's famed runners, Nike panicked, Kenyan officials say.

肯尼亞內羅畢——肯尼亞官員說，當一家中國服裝公司突然表示，可以爲肯尼亞著名運動員提供贊助時，耐克公司急了。

“Can we talk about the situation?” a Nike executive wrote to a Kenyan official after hearing the news that the Kenyans wanted to end their deal with Nike. “You and I go back a long way.”

“我們能不能談談這個情況？”一名耐克高管在聽到肯尼亞人想結束他們與耐克的合同後，給肯尼亞官員寫信問道。“咱們的關係可不是一時兩時了。”

What followed — according to email exchanges, letters, bank records and invoices, provided by a former employee of Kenya's athletics federation — has led to a major scandal in Kenya, a country in the midst of its biggest war against corruption in years.

據肯尼亞田徑協會的一名前僱員提供的電子郵件交換、信件、銀行記錄及費用清單，接下來發生的事，已引發了肯尼亞的一大丑聞，這個國家正處在多年來最大的反腐敗努力之中。

In a contract signed several years ago, Nike agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in honorariums and a one-time $500,000 “commitment bonus,” which the former employee called a bribe.

在幾年前籤的合同中，耐克同意支付數十萬美元的專家酬謝金、以及一筆該前官員稱之爲行賄的50萬美元的一次性“簽約獎金”。

The money was supposed to be used to help train and support poor Kenyan athletes who dream of running their way out of poverty.

這筆錢本來是用於幫助培訓和支持貧困的肯尼亞選手實現他們通過長跑擺脫貧困的夢想的。

Instead, it was immediately sucked out of the federation's bank account by a handful of Kenyan officials and kept off the books.

現在卻被幾名肯尼亞官員從聯合會的銀行賬戶立刻抽走，並沒有記錄到賬上。

Nike has denied any wrongdoing, saying in a statement that its payments were intended to help athletes, and it does not appear to be under investigation by U.S. authorities.

耐克否認有任何不法行爲，公司在一份聲明中說，這筆支付的目的是爲了幫助運動員，公司也似乎並沒有受到美國當局的調查。

But Kenyan authorities are suspicious. They have opened an extensive investigation, and all three Kenyan athletics officials accused of taking money from Nike have been suspended. Investigators with Kenya's Directorate of Criminal Investigations said they had asked Nike repeatedly to provide more information. So far, they say, Nike has refused.

但肯尼亞當局覺得此事可疑。他們已經開始了一個大範圍的調查，而且所有三名被指控拿了耐克錢的肯尼亞田徑官員都已停職。肯尼亞刑事調查部門的調查人員說，他們已多次要求耐克提供更多的信息。他們說，耐克到目前爲止一直拒絕提供。

“Why was such a huge sum of money paid as commitment?” said one of the detectives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “It's only Nike who can tell us.”

“爲什麼這麼一大筆錢是爲簽約支付的？”調查人員之一問道，他要求不透露姓名，因爲沒有得到公開發表評論的授權。“這隻有耐克才能告訴我們。”

John Githongo, one of Kenya's leading voices against corruption, said the U.S. government should pick up this case and “run with it.”

肯尼亞一位大聲呼籲反腐敗的人士約翰·吉鬆戈(John Githongo)表示，美國政府應該調查一下這件事，而且要“一查到底”。

For more than 20 years, Nike Inc. has been paying the Kenyan national runners' association millions of dollars in exchange for the Kenyans wearing Nike's signature swoosh, superb advertising in the running world.

20多年來，耐克公司一直在向肯尼亞的國家長跑運動員協會支付數百萬美元的錢，作爲肯尼亞運動員穿帶有耐克標誌的服裝和鞋的交換，這是長跑界的一個精湛廣告。

Kenyan athletes were so outraged when they learned in November that hundreds of thousands of dollars from Nike had been stolen by their bigwigs that they staged a protest at their headquarters in Nairobi, with elite athletes camped out in the grass and holding up signs that read “blood sucers.” (Some of the runners never finished school.)

肯尼亞運動員在去年11月得知，來自耐克的幾十萬美元已經被協會的頭面人物盜用之後，極爲憤怒，他們在內羅畢的協會總部外舉行了一場抗議，一些精英運動員在草地上安營紮寨，還舉着帶有拼寫錯誤的“吸血鬼”字樣的牌子（有些運動員未曾完成中小學學業。）

Now, one question the Kenyan detectives are trying to answer is whether Nike intentionally made it easy for the officials to pocket the money.

如今，肯尼亞調查者試圖回答的一個問題是，耐克是否故意爲官員把錢裝進自己的口袋提供了方便。

U.S. diplomats in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, said that the U.S. government would be willing to investigate any credible allegations of corruption by U.S. companies, but that they had no specific knowledge of the Nike deal beyond what had been reported in the Kenyan and international press.

在肯尼亞首都內羅畢的美國外交官說，美國政府願意就任何對美國公司腐敗的可信指控進行調查，但他們尚未得到超出肯尼亞和國際新聞報道的有關耐克合同的具體細節。

The allegations go back to 2009, when Kenyan officials, according to the email chain, accused Nike of treating Kenya as a “dumping ground” for substandard Nike clothing.

這些指控回溯到2009年，據一連串的電子信交換，當時肯尼亞官員指責耐克將肯尼亞作爲處理不合格耐克服裝的“垃圾傾倒場”。

But those complaints may have been a ruse by Kenyan officials to get out of the Nike contract so they could receive a bribe from another company, said a member of the executive board of Kenya's track and field federation, known as Athletics Kenya.

但是，這些抱怨可能是肯尼亞官員與耐克解除合同的脫身之計，讓他們能夠從另一家公司接受賄賂，名爲“田徑肯尼亞”(Athletics Kenya)的肯尼亞田徑聯合會執行董事會成員之一說。

Soon after complaining to Nike, officials at Kenya's running federation struck a new sponsorship deal with the Li-Ning Co., a Chinese sports empire founded by a famous gymnast, Li Ning. A marketing agent, working as a middleman between the Chinese company and the Kenyan federation, then sent nearly $200,000 to Athletics Kenya, money that a top official quickly withdrew.

在向耐克提出抱怨後不久，肯尼亞長跑聯合會的官員與李寧有限公司達成了新的贊助協議，這是一家由著名體操運動員李寧創立的中國體育產品巨頭。一位在這家中國公司和肯尼亞聯合會之間擔任中間人的營銷代理，在簽約後支付給田徑肯尼亞近20萬美元，聯合會的一位高級官員很快把這筆錢取走了。

The sports-marketing agent who made the payment, Papa Massata Diack, was recently banned for life by the International Association of Athletics Federations, a global governing body for track and field. Both he and his father, Lamine Diack, a former head of the international athletics association, are under investigation by French authorities in connection with several allegations, including blackmail and bribery.

支付了這筆錢的上述體育營銷代理是帕帕·馬薩塔·迪亞克(Papa Massata Diack)，他最近已被全球田徑管理機構國際田徑協會聯盟終身取消資格。法國當局正在調查他和他的父親、曾經擔任國際田徑協會負責人的拉明·迪亞克(Lamine Diack)，他們與多項指控有關，包括勒索和賄賂。

The Kenyan officials even began talking about designing new Li-Ning uniforms, but they soon learned that shaking off the Nike sponsorship deal was harder than they thought.

肯尼亞官員甚至已開始討論設計新的李寧制服的事情，但他們很快了解到，擺脫耐克的贊助合同比他們認爲的要難。