Revelations follow one another in the corruption scandal linked to the Tokyo 2020 Games. According to several sources close to the matter, cited by the NHK, the organizing committee and the advertising and public relations agency Dentsu have reportedly started to draw up a list of preferred service providers for the test events Olympic Games from 2017, several months before the opening of calls for tenders. The first meetings between Tokyo 2020 and Dentsu were held in July 2017. According to the latest testimonies collected by the prosecutors in charge of the investigation, the idea was to attribute the organization of the test events on a discretionary basis to already chosen companies. But the organizing committee changed its mind in January 2018, and decided to launch the calls for tenders to respect appearances, even if it meant rigging the procedure. Once the calls for tenders were launched, the organizing committee would have continued its series of meetings with Dentsu to ensure that the contracts did not escape the agencies and companies initially chosen. As a reminder, the contracts for the organization of the pre-Olympic events, and certain Games competitions, would have represented a total value of 40 billion yen, or around 300 million dollars.
