Japan is insisting that they won the bid for the 2020 Olympic Games cleanly following a report that the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid team paid 1.3 million euros ($1.48 million) to host the Games.
According to the Guardian, a payment from the Tokyo Olympic bid team was made to a Black Tidings account in Singapore linked to the son of disgraced former world athletics chief Lamine Diack.
Diack Sr was a member of the IOC between 1999 and 2013. In 2014 he became an honorary member. Diack was known for his position as the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), a position he resigned from in November of 2015 after allegations emerged that he had accepted over £1m in bribes to cover up positive Russian doping tests.
Diack Sr is currently under French police investigation for corruption from the November allegations.
In March the Guardian revealed that the French investigation involving Diack Sr had broadened to include the bidding races for both the 2016 and 2020 Olympics.
The alleged payment made to the Singapore account is believed to be under French police scrutiny and will likely increase pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to investigate links between Diack’s regime and the Olympic bidding process.
Diack was still a very influential IOC member in 2013 when Tokyo beat both Istanbul and Madrid in the bidding process for the 2020 Olympics.
The international Olympic Committee said on Wednesday that they had been in touch with French magistrates. According to Reuters an IOC spokesman stated that the IOC’s group’s ethics and compliance officer will continue contact with French authorities during this time.
Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga stated in a news conference that he was, “confident that our bid was conducted in a clean manner,” before adding that should French authorities approach Tokyo on the matter, they would cooperate.
I’m willing to look the other way on something like this if it means the games end up in a place actually capable of hosting the events and providing venues and other infrastructure worthy of the athletes and the international crowd of spectators. If only Japan had greased the skids a little ahead of the voting for the 2016 games, we might not be facing the debacle that the Rio games appear to be destined to be.
100% agree with you! Rio is going to be a disaster. I honestly do not know how those Open Water swimmers will be able to cope swimming in sewage. The Olympic schedule for swimming is down right awful and I do not understand why FINA allowed that schedule to be implemented.
If Japan had paid $2 million to a nuclear agency to look the other way would that be ok ?
The USA has anti corruption laws that they use against foreign & american companies by denying government contracts & contacts . I wonder if they will use that against Japan (should this payment be confirmed).
Gina! Put the keyboard down.
I at least put in the ‘alleged’ aspect . If it found to be so the briber & the bribee are both no good . But The US may have a new admin by then so who nows what the repercussions will be. BTW was was FIFA about then ?
Nothing wrong with greasing the committee. They could use some extra scratch in their pockets 🙂