EXCLUSIVE: A businessman who received millions for his work on Tokyo's successful bid to host 2020 Olympics said he a played key role in securing support of a former Olympics powerbroker suspected by French prosecutors of taking bribes to help Japan’s bid
TOKYO/PARIS - A businessman who received millions of dollars for his work on Tokyo’s successful campaign to host the 2020 Olympics, which was postponed last week due to the coronavirus, said he played a key role in securing the support of a former Olympics powerbroker suspected by French prosecutors of taking bribes to help Japan’s bid.
“You don’t go empty-handed. That’s common sense,” Takahashi told Reuters, referring to the gifts he gave Diack. The Tokyo bid committee also paid $1.3 million to a little-known non-profit institute run by former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a powerful figure in Japanese sports and the head of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee.
The French are also investigating Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, on suspicion that he received the bulk of the money paid to the Singaporean consultant, and passed money on to his father to secure votes for Tokyo. Diack’s son has also denied any wrongdoing and said via email that he would “deliver my version in courts!!!”
Mori and Takahashi were central to Tokyo’s bid to win the Olympics, a campaign that began in 2011 and became a national priority under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Mori has publicly recounted how he lobbied a key International Olympic Committee official ahead of the vote. Takeda’s lawyer said he did not instruct Takahashi to lobby Diack and was unaware of any gifts given by Takahashi to Diack. “Mr. Takeda has never approved such things,” the lawyer said.
A 2016 investigation into the payments made by the Tokyo bid committee, which was conducted by a third-party panel convened by the Japanese Olympic Committee , found no evidence of wrongdoing. The JOC probe was criticized by an outside group of legal and compliance experts for not being thorough enough. The report that resulted from the JOC probe did not examine payments to Takahashi or the Jigoro Kano Memorial International Sport Institute, the non-profit sports institute run by Mori.
Takahashi said he was paid through his company, Commons Inc, by the Tokyo bid committee for “wining and dining” people who could further Tokyo’s bid, and for marketing and other activities related to Tokyo’s Olympic campaign.
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