Sydney 2000 organisers were forced to acknowledge a looming sponsorship crisis yesterday as a leading American sponsor accused the IOC of covering up the Australian city's true involvement in the recent bribery scandal.

John Hancock Financial Services president David D'Alessandro wrote in The New York Times. "What we have here is not the zealous pursuit of corruption that the IOC promised, but a classic cover-up."

IOC marketing director Michael Payne insisted yesterday that the bribes-for-votes scandal has had little or no effect so far on sponsorship for the 2000 Olympics. "No sponsor has withdrawn. No sponsor is withdrawing and future negotiations with potential sponsors are continuing," Payne said. But John Hancock, which is one of the United States' most respected financial firms and pays some US$40 million every four years in sponsorship to the Olympics, is not the only sponsor expressing concerns.

Sydney organisers have admitted making last-minute financial promises to a now-disgraced Kenyan IOC member and his Ugandan colleague the night before the ballot that gave the Australian city the Games by a two-vote margin.

Australian Olympic Committee head John Coates - the man who made the offers - claims they were intended as grants to help African athletes and were not meant to be bribes although he admitted making the offers because he could feel the Games slipping away from Sydney.

"I wasn't going to die wondering why we didn't win," Coates said after the payments were revealed.

D'Alessandro said that comment by Coates was proof enough the payments which were contingent on Sydney winning the Games were intended as bribes.

Games organisers admitted yesterday that they may be forced to slash the Games' Aus$2.6 billion budget if they cannot make up a Aus$200 million dollar sponsorship shortfall.

New South Wales Olympics Minister Michael Knight, the man in charge of supervising Games preparations, tried to be upbeat, saying Olympic organisers had until August to find the money before looking at cutbacks.

At the same time though he began the process of selling a slightly leaner Olympic extravaganza. "You can run a pretty fantastic Olympic Games on $2.4 billion," he said.