1.1 million euros for an analysis

Tsunekazu Takeda resigns as head of the Japanese Olympic Committee. The Reason: Accusations Of Corruption. Prior to the award of the games to Tokyo in 2020, money that can not be explained by Takeda fins. It is not the only financial scandal around the games in Japan. the Christoph Neidhart, Tokio Christoph Neidhart

Christoph Neidhart is the correspondent of the süddeutsche Zeitung in Tokyo, where he lives for nine years. Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Russia Institute of Harvard University and almost eight years as a correspondent in Moscow. Neidhart has published several books, most recently "the Museum of light, Peter Burger Love" and "The noodle, a culture story with a bite".

send an email

Tsunekazu Takeda has often shown how he sent to scandals and resignations moderate. Of his own fall, however, the Public learned bit by bit. In the last week, it was said that the resignation of the President of the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) was "probably"; later, he was "unavoidable". On Saturday Yoshiro Mori, head of the organizing Committee for the summer games in Tokyo in 2020, and political string-puller, then attended, the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, in his private apartment. The Duo is said to have sealed Takeda's fall. On Tuesday, Tokyo's mayor Yuriko Koike has reported that Takeda had announced to her by phone of the cancellation. Only then, the 71-Year-old ratified, to inform the Public: He is to give both Offices, the Bureau of the JOC and the Vice-President of the organizing Committee for Tokyo 2020. However, it is not immediately as expected, but only at the end of June, when his term ends as JOC chief as scheduled. Then he wanted to prove his innocence.

As the President of the candidature Committee had Takeda in July 2013, shortly before the awarding of the 2020 games, 95 million Yen, the equivalent of 750 000 Euro, to the "Black Tidings" transfer, a consulting company in Singapore. This was controlled by Papa Massata Diack, the son of former world athletics Federation President Lamine Diack. The is now in France under house arrest; the Filius is determined in several corruption cases. After Tokyo had been awarded the contract ahead of Istanbul and Madrid, praised Takeda and his Team for "strategic Lobbying". Two months later, in October 2013, he sent a further 135 million Yen to Singapore, around 1.1 Million Euro. Purpose of use: "the analysis of the winning factors".

comment

dirt in the System

For the games in 2024 and 2028 nobody needs oddities in the vote of fear - the IOC leadership was dealing with everything without a choice in the back room. Johannes Aumüller

1.1 million, in retrospect? For a winning analysis? He couldn't explain

As the payments of 2016 were known, the JOC an internal investigation and found that it's all gone clean. The Japanese Parliament accepted this conclusion. How to analyze a vote of 94 IOC members took part, for a Million dollars, was able to Takeda to explain to the deputies never.

the Olympic games are awarded to cities, not countries, hosted by the mayor. As the Tokyo bid to host the games in 2020 prepared for, was the extreme Right-wing Shintaro Ishihara, the mayor (Governor). In October 2012, he had to resign. Takeda reassured and promised continuity. On Ishihara Naoki Inose followed, he, too, nationalist Right. Before the awarding Congress in Buenos Aires polemicised Inose against Islam and not let the world know that Muslims would be able to Olympia to organize; quote: "only Allah, together, and fight each other." A year later, he stumbled over a financial scandal. Takeda promised again continuity. Also Inoses successor, Yoichi Matsuzoe had to go in disgrace, he had supported from the state Treasury. All of this could be Takeda't hurt, as little as the cost-explosion of the Olympic budget and the Bursting of the prestige project of the national stadium, the star architect Zaha Hadid. In this case, the JOC had smuggled his new headquarters in the belly of Hadid's stadium project, the state would need to Fund.

Takeda comes from one of those Japanese families, who believe themselves above the law. His father, Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda, lost after the war, his title of nobility (which were abolished in addition to the lines of the Imperial house; Tsuneyoshi was the grandson of Emperor Meiji, and Cousin of Emperor Hirohito), and was a sports official. First of all, he was the President of the Japanese skating Federation, 1962, the chief of the Japanese Olympic Committee from 1967 to 1981, he also sat in the IOC. For today's 71-year-old son, took part in the 1972 and 1976 as a show jumping rider at the Olympic part, it was a matter of course, follow the same path. As Kenji Ikawa wrote in the Webzeitung Litera, has opened to him by the father. Ikawa reported, in 1974, Takeda got hurt with a horse Transporter, a pedestrian fatal. According to the newspaper reports he was to blame for the accident, but never in front of court for this reason. His career had not suffered any kink. With the JOC's Bureau during the summer games in Tokyo in the coming year, Takeda wanted to crown this career. The JOC had, for him, the age limitation. According to the articles of Association, over 70-Year-old may not be selected in a panel.

Takeda has exercised in the Olympic bureaucracy, all sorts of functions. In the IOC, he is head of the Marketing Commission, he was several times head of the Japanese Olympic Delegation for the winter games in Nagano in 1998, the sporting Director. In the awarding of those games was paid for with $ 14 million, is today undisputed. Indications that Takeda was directly involved, although there is not. The city of Nagano lured 62 IOC members at the time, with First-Class flights, luxury stays in the Onsen, the Japanese baths, and rumored to be far larger gifts. The municipal administration led to the paper on these bribes. She picked up the documents in ten sealed boxes. However, as the International Olympic Committee started investigating, the officials Junichi Yamaguchi, the ten boxes in the waste incineration. From "courtesy" to the IOC members, as he told the Washington Post later. "This could be for you, Yes, unpleasant."

After that scandal was blown, said Tsunekazu Takeda, at the time still the Executive member of the Japanese NOK: "The Olympic movement is branded with a bad Image, this is sad for the athletes who fight in pure spirit." He hope, the truth come to light, and the movement was born "as a clean IOC." Something Similar could one day say to his successor.