Pat Hickey: “The €1.5 million was done without my knowledge, I know nothing about it.”

The interview will be aired in full on Wednesday morning.

Former President of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI), Pat Hickey has spoken to Newstalk Breakfast about his arrest at the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro. The interview between Hickey and Newstalk Breakfast Host, Paul Williams will be Hickey's first interview since the arrest which was part of an investigation into alleged ticket touting. The investigation meant Hickey would step aside from his presidential status at the OCI and he was interrogated by Brazilian police, his passport was taken from him and he spent some time in a maximum security prison. He returned to Ireland after his release from prison and was put under house arrest on his return but Hickey has continued to deny all charges which were made against him. The ticketing scandal has said to have cost the OCI around €1.5 million but in his first interview since the arrest, Hickey remains firm that he is innocent. Speaking exclusively to Newstalk Breakfast, Mr Hickey denied that: "My reaction to that is that that is not correct. "There is full insurance cover at the moment for my costs - and the impression the media give is that I was the sole cost of this spend of €1.5 million," he said. He added: "I've been able to establish after I was arrested in Rio, the executive committee created a crisis management committee - which consisted of three people - and they had powers of expenditure. "The €1.5 million was done without my knowledge, I know nothing about it - this was done by the crisis management committee. It's just that the media gave the impression that I was the cause of that cost." https://twitter.com/NewstalkFM/status/879580781437431809 An extra snippet of the interview was played on Newstalk Breakfast on Tuesday morning where Hickey added that: "When you're President for 30-years, you make a lot of enemies. "This was a great opportunity for them to criticise me and I was portrayed as a war-class criminal." The full interview will be aired on Newstalk Breakfast on Wednesday at 8am.