No respite for Tokyo 2020. At a time when the Olympic movement is busy working on the calendar and travel plans for 2021, a new affair is overwhelming the Japanese organizers. It adds to the most troubled final episodes of Tokyo's bid for the 2020 Games.
The bomb is dropped by Reuters. The British agency had access to the Tokyo 2020 campaign accounts. It revealed that it had discovered, written in black and white, the trace of a payment of 8,2 million dollars paid to a former executive of the advertising agency and Dentsu Public Relations, Haruyuki Takahashi (pictured below).
The reason ? The person concerned admitted it himself: lobbying work. In his own words, Haruyuki Takahashi was charged by the Japanese bid committee with influencing certain members of the IOC to encourage them to vote for Tokyo, then in competition with Madrid and Istanbul.
Among them, Lamine Diack. The former president of the IAAF, still awaiting his trial before the French courts for acts of corruption and money laundering, would have been showered with gifts by Haruyuki Takahashi. He reportedly received a digital camera and a Seiko watch.
At the material time, Lamine Diack was still an active member of the IOC. On the eve of the vote for the host city of the 2020 Summer Games, organized in September 2013 in Buenos Aires, the Senegalese brought together a group of African leaders to tell them that he had decided to vote for Tokyo.
Haruyuki Takahashi does not entirely deny the facts. Asked by Reuters, the Japanese acknowledges having received payment from the candidacy committee. But he refuses to detail the exact nature of his work as a lobbyist. He admits to having approached Lamine Diack, to having offered him certain gifts, but explains that such a practice is not illegal in the Olympic world. “ You never leave empty-handed. It’s common sense.”, he explained to Reuters.
The British agency reveals that it discovered a transfer of $46.500 in the name of Seiko Watch in the bank statements of the Japanese bid committee. A former Tokyo 2020 bid executive has confirmed that watches purchased from the Japanese brand were indeed given away at receptions during the 2020 Games campaign.
Clarification: the rules of the IOC authorized gifts to its members at the time. But the text was intended to be vague. It did not mention an amount beyond which it was strongly recommended to refuse, under penalty of violating the code of ethics.
Haruyuki Takahashi is no longer part of the Dentsu agency staff. But he remains very involved in preparing for the Tokyo Games. He sits on the board of directors of the organizing committee. He stood out at the beginning of last month by explaining before everyone else, Wall Street Journal, that the Games would not be canceled but that it was not excluded to postpone them for one or two years.
Also disturbing is the trace in the Tokyo 2020 accounts of a payment of $1,3 million to a Japanese non-profit organization. Little known, it was led at the time by Yoshiro Mori, the former Japanese Prime Minister, now president of the organizing committee for the Tokyo 2020 Games.
Yoshori Mori did not respond to requests from Reuters. But a representative of the association cited in the British media investigation explained that the money essentially corresponded to work “ analysis of international information. » A service paid at a high price.
