Former Tokyo Olympics official arrested over bid rigging

Tokyo, Japan | Xinhua | Japanese prosecutors arrested a former operations executive of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics organizing committee and three others on Wednesday over bid-rigging accusations, local media reported.

Tokyo prosecutors arrested the former senior official, Yasuo Mori, on suspicion of being a key player in the anti-monopoly law breach of preparing games test events, running the Summer Games competitions, and rigging bids for contracts.

The contracted amount to run the pre-games and competitions at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in 2021 totaled around 303 million U.S. dollars, Kyodo News reported.

The other three arrested are Koji Hemmi, a former executive at Japanese ad giant Dentsu Inc., and officials Yoshiji Kamata and Masahiko Fujino from event production companies Cerespo Co. and Fuji Creative Corp., respectively, both firms that won contracts to plan test events.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told the press that Mori’s arrest was “extremely regrettable,” according to local reports.

In the bribery scandal, Haruyuki Takahashi, a former official at the organizing committee, has been charged four times with accepting bribes totaling over 198 million yen (about 1.5 million U.S. dollars) in exchange for assisting businesses in being chosen as sponsors or marketing agents of the major event.

Prosecutors claimed that Takahashi, who was also a former senior managing director at Dentsu, had influence over the committee’s marketing division, which was in charge of choosing sponsors.