Tokyo 2020 Olympic Bid Denies Misconduct

(ATR) Tokyo 2020 bid chiefs and Japan’s Olympic minister have dismissed allegations of misconduct surrounding a $1.5 million secret payment made during the campaign, now the subject of an investigation by French prosecutors.

After Tokyo 2020 said Thursday it knew nothing about the alleged payment, former bid president Tsunekazu Takeda, chair of the IOC’s marketing commission, issued a statement on Friday. He confirmed payments were made into an account in Singapore linked to Papa Masa Diack, son of the disgraced former IAAF president Lamine Diack.

It was alleged the payment to Black Tidings, reported to be in the name of Ian Tan Tong Han, was aimed at winning support for Tokyo’s Olympic campaign.

"We would like to reaffirm that the Olympic Games 2020 were awarded to Tokyo as the result of a fair competition and as a result of the contents of our bid," Takeda said in a statement also signed by the bid’s former director general Nobumoto Higuchi.

"The payments mentioned in the media were a legitimate consultant’s fee paid to the service we received from Mr. Tan’s company. It followed a full and proper contract and the monies were fully audited by Ernst & Young ShinNihon."

Takeda confirmed that the Tokyo bid committee paid an amount for "professional services received" for consultation work including: planning of the bid; tutoring on presentation practice; advise for international lobbying and communications; and service for information and media analysis.

"All these services were properly contracted using accepted business practices," he said in the statement.

"The firm contracted for this work had good credentials and references and were experts on Asian and Arabic and we were fully satisfied with the service we received from them."

Takeda said the amounts paid were "in our opinion proper and adequate for the services provided and gave no cause for suspicion at the time".

He said Tokyo had conveyed this message to the IOC after the Olympic committee requested an explanation when allegations about the payment first surfaced. "The activity by the Tokyo bid Committee was at all times fair and correct," the statement concluded.

The payment from the bid in 2013 to the account in Singapore linked to Papa Masa Diack was first revealed in a footnote last November within the report of the WADA independent commission investigating the doping scandal involving Russian track and field athletes. The footnote said the payment from Tokyo came after a Japanese company signed a sponsorship deal with the IAAF before the IOC vote on 2020 in September 2013.

Japan Launches Probe

On Friday,Japan’s Olympic and sports ministers also attempted to quash allegations of an illicit payment at a press conference in Tokyo.

Olympic minister Toshiaki Endo said the Japan Sports Agency had launched an investigation into the payment claims in conjunction with the Tokyo Metropolitan government and the Japanese Olympic Committee.

He said Tokyo 2020’s bid campaign "had got an evaluation of the most fair of candidate cities"."I think we are fair because we haven’t cheated," he told reporters a scheduled press conference on Friday morning.

Sports minister Hiroshi Hase added: "We will cooperate with French law enforcement agency to investigate this."

Reported by Mark Bissonand Hironori Hashimoto in Tokyo

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