A Tokyo court on Friday (April 21) sentenced the former president of a Japanese company sponsor of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and two collaborators to suspended prison sentences.
The former chairman of Aoki Holdings, Hironori Aoki, 84, was given a 30-month suspended prison sentence. He was found guilty of having paid bribes to ensure his company, a Japanese chain of business suits stores, to become an official partner of the Olympics 2020. He pleaded guilty in December, according to Japanese media. Haruyuki Takahashi is suspected of having received in 2017 the equivalent of more than 320,000 euros in bribes from Aoki Holdings, which became the following year an official partner of the 2020 Olympics. His trial has not yet started and he maintains his innocence, according to the press.
The prosecution had requested 30 months in prison against him, according to local media. Two of his former collaborators at Aoki Holdings also received suspended prison sentences, but shorter. The three men were arrested last August along with Haruyuki Takahashi, a former member of the Tokyo Games organizing committee.
Other arrests over similar grievances have taken place in recent months, including the then chairman of major Japanese publishing company Kadokawa and the former boss of ad agency ADK, who pleaded guilty in February. Dentsu, the largest Japanese advertising agency, is also in the crosshairs of investigators, who suspect it along with other companies of having rigged calls for tenders for preparation contracts linked to the 2020 Olympics which amounted to 40 billion. yen (some 270 million euros at the current exchange rate). Haruyuki Takahashi had also previously worked at Dentsu. Another former Olympics organizer, Yasuo Mori, was also arrested in February in connection with the separate bid rigging case.
Suspicions of corruption in the awarding of the Olympics
Suspicions of corruption have also long floated over the conditions for awarding the 2020 Olympics to the Japanese capital by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2013. In March 2019, the President of the Japanese Olympic Committee Tsunekazu Takeda had resigned a few months after being indicted by French justice, which is investigating this case. Tsunekazu Takeda is suspected of having paid Black Tidings, a company established in Singapore, before and after the designation of the Japanese capital by the IOC as the host city of the Olympic Games-2020. According to French investigators, Black Tidings was only an “empty shell” which led to Papa Massata Diack, son of the former Senegalese boss of world athletics and influential ex-member of the IOC Lamine Diack, who died at the end of 2021.
These legal scandals surrounding the Tokyo Olympics have also affected Sapporo’s bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics. The capital of the island of Hokkaido, in northern Japan, has suspended since December 2022 its promotional activities around this candidacy, and does not now rule out aiming for the 2034 Winter Olympics instead.
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