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SALT LAKE CITY (CNN) -- An ethics committee investigating an alleged votes-for-cash scandal to bring the 2002 Winter Olympic Games to Utah is due to release its report next week, a spokesman for the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee (SLOC) said Wednesday.

"It'll either be Tuesday or Thursday," spokesman Frank Zang said. The report would be presented at a public meeting of the SLOC board of directors.

Former bid committee chairman speaks out

In his first interview since the Olympics bribery scandal broke, Tom Welch told CNN he had "made a lot of mistakes along the way" but was only ever trying to help Utah become a member of the "Olympic family".

Welch has been accused of "buying" the Olympics by giving expensive gifts and cash to members of the International Olympic Committee and college scholarships to the families of some IOC representatives.

When he contacted CNN, Welch said he felt a need to "set the record straight". Welch is marrying in California this weekend, for the second time.

Among other things, Welch admitted cash payments to IOC members. "I had, on two instances, where somebody on the outside said if you could put money together you could get some votes."

Welch said the son of African IOC member Jean-Claude Ganga told him $35,000 could influence four of five IOC votes, before Salt Lake City's winning bid in 1995 for the 2002 games.

But, Welch said, "There were no bribes of trying to buy votes. Yeah, the process of the campaign is to influence votes, and we did it. But we didn't do anything that we didn't disclose fully to our board and those who we were responsible to."

Welch: Governor knew of activities

Welch went on to say Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was well aware of the bid committee's activities.

The governor's press secretary, Vicki Varela, told CNN, "The governor did not know about the inappropriate activities of the bid committee. He did not know."

Welch said, "The governor searched his heart and his soul and found nothing. I mean, whether it was the kids on scholarship that met him, or whether it was the use of his plane to take people to southern Utah.

"People maybe didn't like what we did. I didn't particularly like what we did, but in life you sometimes go through things for the end objective," Welch said.

"You join a fraternity, as a good example. You go through the hazing because, eventually, you want the brotherhood that comes, and it's the same way with the Olympic process and the test of a community that you go through."

Welch suggested what the bid committee did was no different from donating to a political candidate hoping to win influence, and no different from the Mormon Church.

"We bring kids in here to go to school. The Mormon Church brings kids in here to go to school, sons of foreign diplomats of countries they're trying to get into, under the auspices of exposing the people here to them and them to our people."

As for changes Welch would make at the IOC level, Welch said, "You don't have lifetime members. Whenever you create kingdoms you create kings."

Welch also acknowledged that $50,000 in cash was taken to Budapest in 1995 before the IOC's vote for the location of the 2002 Winter Games. Welch said the money was needed to take care of 450 people who traveled there from Utah hoping the state would win the bid.

Welch said, "Whatever was taken was documented going out, and there are receipts coming back.

"I am confident and know that we didn't do anything illegal."

In 1983 Welch formed what would later become the Salt Lake Bid Committee. In 1997, after winning the 2002 Olympics for the city, he resigned.

Japan Olympics bid details reported

Correspondents Greg LaMotte and Marina Kamimura and Reuters contributed to this report.

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