IOC taking Tokyo bribery scandal 'seriously'

A senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) official said Thursday allegations of illegal payments to help Tokyo win the 2020 Games were being taken ‘very seriously’ but insisted there would be no independent IOC probe.

John Coates, chairman of the IOC's Tokyo 2020 coordination commission, welcomed the two separate investigations currently being conducted by French prosecutors and Japanese officials.

‘The IOC takes the allegations in respect with the bid very seriously,’ Coates told reporters in Tokyo. ‘We have a zero tolerance approach with regards to corruption in the bidding process.

‘We are pleased that they're being investigated at that level,’ he added. ‘We share the same concerns as the Japanese public do about corruption, but we have decided we won't conduct a parallel investigation.’

Controversy has once again cast a shadow over Japan's preparations for the 2020 Games after French authorities launched an investigation into payments of $2 million allegedly paid into a Singapore bank account, said to have been given to the son of disgraced former athletics chief Lamine Diack.

Coates refused to be drawn when asked if he felt Tokyo's preparations would be affected or if the city could even be stripped of the Olympics if found to have acted illegally.

‘I certainly hope not,’ he said. ‘There's a range of remedies and sanctions that can be considered but I'm not going to speculate on those until we know the outcome of these two investigations, which we are closely monitoring.’

The Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) -- headed by Tsunekazu Takeda, the same man who fronted the Tokyo 2020 bid team -- ordered its own probe after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered unfettered cooperation with French prosecutors.

Tokyo 2020 bid leaders have denied any wrongdoing with Takeda insisting the payments were ‘a legitimate consultant's fee’.

 

- Blazing row -

Coates, who on a visit to inspect venues last year became embroiled in a blazing public row over the spiralling cost of Tokyo's Olympic stadium, said: ‘I've no reason to doubt Mr Takeda's statement.’

Last year, the IOC launched its so-called ‘consultants register’ in an attempt to help control the cost of bidding for an Olympics and make the process more transparent.

‘We were concerned about the cost of consultants,’ said Coates. ‘It was clear from the two leading bids (of Tokyo and Istanbul) from last time that they had spent money on consultancies. We worry about the need for consultants.’

Allegations that the payments -- made in 2013 to a Singapore-based consultant Ian Tan Tong Han's firm Black Tidings -- were improper, first reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper two weeks ago, sent shock waves through Japan.

Tan, said to be an associate of Diack's son Papa Massata Diack, declined to comment on Thursday when he was contacted by AFP via his Singapore mobile phone number.

Tokyo has been hit by a series of controversies since beating Istanbul and Madrid in September 2013 in the race to host the coveted Summer Games.

Prime Minister Abe pulled the plug on the original plan for the new Olympic stadium last year amid public anger over its $2 billion price tag.

Further embarrassment followed when Tokyo organisers ditched their 2020 Games logo after allegations of plagiarism and the threat of legal action from a Belgian designer who claimed it too closely resembled the emblem of a theatre in Liege, Belgium.