Did Tokyo buy 2020 Olympics?
The decision to award the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo will come under fresh scrutiny amid allegations that payments were made to the Singapore-based company at the centre of the athletics corruption scandal.
|||The decision to award the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo will come under fresh scrutiny amid allegations that payments were made to the Singapore-based company at the centre of the athletics corruption scandal.
Sportsmail understands that there is evidence of two possible payments totalling more than £1million that were made by the Tokyo bid, either side of the 2020 Games vote in 2013, to the Black Tidings company who are suspected by French financial investigators of laundering money extorted from drug cheats in athletics.
Black Tidings have direct links to Papa Massata Diack, the son of former IAAF president Lamine Diack and someone who, along with his father, is now under criminal investigation by the French authorities.
This is not the first time the Tokyo bid has been linked to Lamine Diack and possible corruption in the attempt to secure the vote, when the Japanese beat Istanbul 60-36 in the final round of voting after Madrid had been eliminated in a first-round ballot.
In January, the IOC said they were ready to examine allegations of bribery in the bidding for the 2020 Olympics. A footnote to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s independent commission report had indicated that Lamine Diack was prepared to sell his vote in the 2020 bidding contest in exchange for sponsorship of IAAF events.
The report suggested that Diack, then an IOC member, dropped his support for Istanbul because the Turkish city refused to pay up, and instead opted to back Tokyo after the Japanese paid an alleged $5m sponsorship money.
The WADA commission did not pursue the matter further because it fell outside their remit when investigating the Russian doping scandal and allegations of corruption inside the IAAF.
But the IOC responded to the footnote by requesting the evidence from WADA.
Allegations of these two payments are sure to increase the sense of urgency at the IOC with the so-far unexplained link between the Tokyo 2020 bid and Black Tidings now likely to become the focus of a team of French financial investigators already known to be looking at the awarding of the World Athletics Championships from 2009 to 2021 as well as the bidding processes of the 2016 and 2020 Olympics.
It is understood Papa Massata Diack denies being linked to the two alleged payments from Tokyo, and a statement from the Tokyo Organising Committee to Sportsmail also denied any knowledge of such transactions.
Tokyo 2020 spokesperson Hikariko Ono said: ‘The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee has no means of knowing these allegations.
‘We believe that the Games were awarded to Tokyo because the city presented the best bid.’
This first statement appeared to make a distinction between the Organising Committee and the Bid Committee. The latter was disbanded once the 2013 vote had gone in Tokyo’s favour.
But there are clear links between the two. For instance, Tsunekazu Takeda was president of the bid and is now vice-chairman of the Organising Committee.
When pressed on this point, Tokyo 2020 issued a further statement.
‘TheOrganising Committee has no means of knowing these allegationsagainst the Bid Committee,’ it said. ‘The breakdown of the bid activity promotion expenses is disclosed in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid activity report (only available in Japanese).’ – Daily Mail