Olympic Games: first conviction in the mega-corruption scandal surrounding Tokyo 2020

The scandal began to break out last summer in Japan, a year after the 2020 Olympics which were finally held in 2021 and almost entirely behind closed doors because of the pandemic. Many companies in the country have since been splashed and the affair has even compromised the candidacy of Sapporo (northern Japan) for the 2030 Winter Olympics.

Former Aoki Holdings chairman Hironori Aoki, 84, was given a 30-month suspended prison sentence on Friday, a spokesman for the Tokyo Magistrate's Court told AFP. He was found guilty of paying bribes to ensure his company, a Japanese chain of business suit stores, became an official partner of the 2020 Olympics. He pleaded guilty in December, according to media Japanese. 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 (six months and one year), according to the Japanese news agency Jiji. The three men were arrested last August along with Haruyuki Takahashi, a former member of the Tokyo Games organizing committee. Mr. 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. started yet.

"These criminal acts damaged society's confidence in the smooth running of the Games, which attracted worldwide attention and were important for the country," Judge Kenji Yasunaga said on Friday in comments reported by the Jiji agency. “We take this judgment seriously and we will do everything possible” to prevent such a case from happening again and to “regain the trust of our customers”, reacted Friday a spokeswoman for Aoki Holdings questioned by the AFP.

Other arrests on similar grievances followed, such as those of the then chairman of major Japanese publishing company Kadokawa and the former boss of advertising 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). Another former official of the organization of the Olympics, Yasuo Mori, was also arrested in February as part of this separate part of the case.

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 resigned a few months later. to have been indicted by the French justice system, which is investigating this case. Mr. Takeda is suspected of having paid Black Tidings, a company based in Singapore, before and after the designation of the Japanese capital by the IOC as the host city of the 2020 Olympics. 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.