Japan yesterday said it would question officials involved in Tokyo’s successful 2020 Olympics bid over a multimillion-dollar payment that is being probed by French investigators.
Japan’s announcement came after French prosecutors said they suspect that US$2 million paid to a son of disgraced former world athletics supremo Lamine Diack was aimed at winning support for the Tokyo 2020 bid.
“We will further work to confirm facts,” top Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told a regular press conference, citing the French probe.
Japanese Minister of the Olympics Toshiaki Endo said that the Japanese Sports Agency would speak to officials from the Tokyo metropolitan government and the Japanese Olympic Committee.
However, Suga and Endo said they were confident that no wrongdoing occurred, based on previous declarations by officials.
“I don’t believe that such [corruption] took place,” Endo told reporters.
Suga said that Tokyo had already received a report that the bid committee did not make such a payment after suspicions first emerged in January following a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
While Japanese officials deny any wrongdoing by the Tokyo bid, the Asahi Shimbun daily quoted “several bid committee members” as saying there was a team outside the formal bid committee that conducted “unknown” activities.
About 2.8 million Singapore dollars (US$2 million) paid to a company owned by Papa Missata Diack is at the center of the suspicions, French prosecutors said in a statement on Thursday.
Diack, father and son, already face corruption charges in France.
Two payments were made in 2013 to Black Tidings, a Singapore-based company linked to Papa Diack, who was employed by the International Association of Athletics Federations as a consultant, the prosecutors said.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) in September 2013 chose Tokyo over Istanbul and Madrid as host for the 2020 Games. Diack senior was an IOC member at the time.
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