Japanese businessman paid US$8.2 million by Tokyo Olympics bid lobbied figure at center of French corruption probe - The Globe and Mail | Canada News Media
Haruyuki Takahashi, executive member of the Tokyo 2020 board, puts on a face mask during a meeting regarding the coronavirus outbreak on March 30, 2020.
ISSEI KATO/AFP/Getty Images
A businessman who received millions of dollars for his work on Tokyo’s successful campaign to host the 2020 Olympics, which was postponed last week due to the coronavirus, said he played a key role in securing the support of a former Olympics power broker suspected by French prosecutors of taking bribes to help Japan’s bid.
Haruyuki Takahashi, a former executive at the advertising agency Dentsu Inc, was paid $8.2 million by the committee that spearheaded Tokyo’s bid for the 2020 Games, according to financial records reviewed by Reuters. Takahashi told Reuters his work included lobbying International Olympic Committee members like Lamine Diack, the ex-Olympics power broker, and that he gave Diack gifts, including digital cameras and a Seiko watch.
“They’re cheap,” he said.
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The payments made Takahashi the single largest recipient of money from the Tokyo bid committee, which was mostly funded by Japanese companies. After his involvement in Tokyo’s successful campaign, Takahashi was named to the board of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, a group tasked with running the summer Games after it was awarded to Japan.
Takahashi acknowledged receiving the payments but declined to give a full accounting of how he used the money. He said he urged Diack to support the Tokyo bid and denied any impropriety in those dealings. He said it was normal to provide gifts as a way of currying good relations with important officials like Diack. He said there was nothing improper with the payments he received or with the way he used the money.
“You don’t go empty-handed. That’s common sense,” Takahashi told Reuters, referring to the gifts he gave Diack.
Banking records from the Tokyo 2020 bid committee, which were examined by Reuters, show it paid around $46,500 to Seiko Watch. A senior official at the bid told Reuters “good” watches were handed out at parties organized as part of Tokyo’s campaign to win the Olympics, although he did not specify the brand.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) regulations allowed for the giving of gifts of nominal value at the time of the 2020 bid, but didn’t stipulate a specific amount.
A day before the 2013 vote on the host city, Diack informed a meeting of African Olympic representatives that he planned to support Tokyo on merit, a lawyer for the influential Senegalese sports figure told Reuters. But he didn’t instruct anyone how to vote, the lawyer said.
The Tokyo bid committee also paid $1.3 million to a little-known non-profit institute run by former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a powerful figure in Japanese sports and the head of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee.
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The payments to Takahashi’s company and Mori’s non-profit are enumerated in banking records from the Tokyo 2020 bid committee examined by Reuters. The payments were first reported by Japanese magazine Facta. French investigators have not questioned anyone about the payments to the Japanese recipients.
The banking records were provided to French prosecutors by Japan’s government as part of France’s investigation into whether Tokyo’s bid committee paid $2.3 million through a Singaporean consultant to win Diack’s support for Japan to host the 2020 Games.
Diack, 86, has consistently denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer said Diack “denies all allegations of bribery.”
The French are also investigating Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, on suspicion that he received the bulk of the money paid to the Singaporean consultant, and passed money on to his father to secure votes for Tokyo. Diack’s son has also denied any wrongdoing and said via e-mail that he would “deliver my version in courts!!!”
Mori did not respond to questions from Reuters. A representative of Mori’s non-profit said the entity was paid by the bid committee to “mainly analyze international information.”
Nobumoto Higuchi, the secretary general of the bid committee, said Takahashi earned commissions on the corporate sponsorships he collected for the bid. “Takahashi has connections,” Higuchi said. “We needed someone who understands the business world.”
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The International Olympic Committee said it would not have been made aware of payments between private parties or gifts given to IOC members.
FRENCH INVESTIGATION
Olympic preparations have cost Japanese taxpayers some $13 billion, and the delay of the Games has rattled corporate sponsors, who had paid a record $3 billion to be affiliated with the Olympics as of June last year.
Mori and Takahashi were central to Tokyo’s bid to win the Olympics, a campaign that began in 2011 and became a national priority under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Mori has publicly recounted how he lobbied a key International Olympic Committee official ahead of the vote.
Since 2015, French prosecutors have been investigating Diack, formerly the head of the international body governing track and field. Diack has also been accused of taking a separate $2 million bribe to corral votes for Rio de Janeiro in that city’s successful bid to hold the Olympics in 2016. He has been under house arrest in France since charges of corruption linked to sports doping – when he headed the International Association of Athletics Federations – were brought against him in 2015.
Diack’s lawyer said his client “did not receive any money from anyone relating to the Olympic Games in Tokyo or Rio de Janeiro.”
Tsunekazu Takeda, who headed Tokyo’s bid committee, is also under investigation by the French on suspicion of authorizing the payments from the bid committee to the Singaporean consultant that investigators suspect acted as an intermediary to get money to Diack. Takeda resigned from both the Japanese Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee last year and has denied wrongdoing, saying he believed the payments were for legitimate lobbying efforts.
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Takeda’s lawyer said he did not instruct Takahashi to lobby Diack and was unaware of any gifts given by Takahashi to Diack. “Mr. Takeda has never approved such things,” the lawyer said.
Abe promised full co-operation with the French investigation, which is part of a long-running probe of corruption in international sports, including the cover-up of doping cases involving Russian athletes.
Privately, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, the French magistrate who led the investigation until June last year, had complained that Japanese prosecutors did not provide all the information the French investigators were seeking, according to internal transcripts related to the probe reviewed by Reuters. The magistrate, the current French judge overseeing the case, and Japan’s justice ministry all declined to comment.
In response to questions from Reuters, the International Olympic Committee said it supported “the French judicial authorities and needs to respect the confidentiality of the process.” It added that it was “partie civile” to the proceedings, meaning it views itself as a potential victim and could seek compensation.
A 2016 investigation into the payments made by the Tokyo bid committee, which was conducted by a third-party panel convened by the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC), found no evidence of wrongdoing. The JOC probe was criticized by an outside group of legal and compliance experts for not being thorough enough. The report that resulted from the JOC probe did not examine payments to Takahashi or the Jigoro Kano Memorial International Sport Institute, the non-profit sports institute run by Mori.
The JOC said it was separate from the bid committee and had no knowledge of payments made to Takahashi’s company and Mori’s non-profit.
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Asked about the payments, an organizing committee spokesman said the bid committee had been disbanded and the organizing committee was “not in a position to know the details of the bidding activities.”
‘WINING AND DINING’
In a series of interviews with Reuters, Takahashi, 75, described how he became involved in the Tokyo bid. He said he was brought on as a consultant by bid-committee chief Takeda. Takahashi said one of his main assets was the connections he had built to Diack and other powerful figures in international sports during a career developing Dentsu’s sports marketing business.
Takeda’s lawyer said he “knows nothing” about the contract between Takahashi and the bid committee, except for the fact that “a contract on marketing activities existed.”
Takahashi said he was paid through his company, Commons Inc, by the Tokyo bid committee for “wining and dining” people who could further Tokyo’s bid, and for marketing and other activities related to Tokyo’s Olympic campaign.
The payments were in part “a commission fee” for his role in gathering sponsors to fund Tokyo’s bid, he said. “I didn’t pay any money to anybody. This is my profit.”
Takahashi said he asked Diack to support the Tokyo bid, but denied that he paid bribes or did anything wrong. He said he believed Diack wanted to vote for Tokyo because of Takahashi’s support for the International Association of Athletics Federations when Takahashi was a Dentsu executive. The Monaco-based organization, which governs track and field and is now called World Athletics, was run by Diack until 2015.
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Asked how he used the payments he received from the Tokyo bid committee, Takahashi said he was under no obligation to detail what he did with the money. “One day before I die, I will tell you,” he said.
The Kano institute headed by Mori, which received $1.3 million from Tokyo’s bid committee, was named after a judo master who spearheaded the ultimately scrapped effort to bring the 1940 Olympics to Tokyo. It has one staff member, Tamie Ohashi.
Ohashi told Reuters the money was used by the institute to hire a U.S.-based consulting firm and two individual consultants to support the Tokyo 2020 bid. She said she didn’t know why the institute, and not the Tokyo bid committee, hired the consultants, and declined to name them.
The institute’s website does not list any activities explicitly linked to the bid. Ohashi also said the institute paid for research that would help Tokyo’s campaign.
Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Akihiro Nishimura, said the government could not answer questions about the bid committee’s activities. He said questions about payments to Takahashi and the Kano institute should be directed to the JOC and the Tokyo metropolitan government, because they mainly led the effort.
The Tokyo Metropolitan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — The Miami Dolphins will bring in another quarterback while starter Tua Tagovailoa deals with his latest concussion, coach Mike McDaniel said Friday.
For now, Skylar Thompson will be considered the Dolphins’ starter while Tagovailoa is sidelined. Tagovailoa left Thursday night’s 31-10 loss to Buffalo in the third quarter with the third known concussion of his NFL career, all of them coming in the last 24 months.
“The team and the organization are very confident in Skylar,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel said the team has not made any decision about whether to place Tagovailoa on injured reserve. Tagovailoa was expected at the team facility on Friday to start the process of being evaluated in earnest.
“We just have to operate in the unknown and be prepared for every situation,” McDaniel said, noting that the only opinions that will matter to the team will be the ones from Tagovailoa and the medical staff.
McDaniel added that he doesn’t see Tagovailoa playing in Miami’s next game at Seattle on Sept. 22.
“I have no idea and I’m not going to all of a sudden start making decisions that I don’t even see myself involved in the most important parts of,” McDaniel added. “All I’m telling Tua is everyone is counting on you to be a dad and be a dad this weekend. And then we’ll move from there. There won’t be any talk about where we’re going in that regard … none of that will happen without doctors’ expertise and the actual player.”
Tagovailoa was 17 for 25 passing for 145 yards, with one touchdown and three interceptions — one of which was returned for a Buffalo score — when he got hurt. Thompson completed eight of 14 passes for 80 yards.
Thompson said he feels “fully equipped” to run the Dolphins’ offense.
“What’s going to lie ahead, who knows, but man, I’m confident, though,” Thompson said after Thursday’s game. “I feel like I’m ready for whatever’s to come. I’m going to prepare and work hard and do everything I can to lead this team and do my job.”
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
TORSBY, Sweden (AP) — David Beckham and former England coach Roy Hodgson were among the soccer dignitaries who attended the funeral of Sven-Goran Eriksson on Friday in the Swedish manager’s small hometown of Torsby.
Eriksson’s wooden coffin was covered in white flowers and surrounded by six tall candles and other floral wreaths as the ceremony began inside the 600-seat Fryksande church.
“It is a day of grief but also a day of thankfulness,” the priest, Ingela Älvskog, told those in attendance.
Beckham, who arrived by private jet on Thursday, greeted Eriksson’s 95-year-old father Sven and other family members with hugs inside the church before the funeral started.
Eriksson became England’s first foreign-born coach when he led the national team from 2001-06, and made Beckham his captain.
Eriksson, who also won trophies at club level in Italy, Portugal and Sweden, died on Aug. 26 at the age of 76, eight months after he revealed he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had at most one year to live.
Some 200 seats in the neo-Gothic church from 1898 were reserved for his family, friends and players from his career in the football world, according to his agent. The remaining seats were open for the public, according to Eriksson’s wish, with a big screen set up outside the church where hundreds more gathered to watch the ceremony. The funeral was also broadcast live on some Swedish media websites.
The wooden coffin was wheeled in by pallbearers at the church Friday morning as fog wrapped Torsby — a town of about 4,000 people located about 310 kilometers (193 miles) west of Stockholm. Next to the casket was a photo of Eriksson on a small table. The floral wreaths included ones sent by FIFA and Lazio, the Italian team that Eriksson led to the Serie A title in 2000.
The ceremony began with somber piano and organ music, but later took on a more upbeat note with Swedish singer Charlotta Birgersson performing Elton John’s song “Candle In The Wind” and then “My Way” in a duet with Johan Birgersson, who later intoned the popular Italian song “Volare” after the family had gathered around the casket to lay flowers.
Beckham also visited Eriksson in Sweden in June to say goodbye. Others attending the funeral included the Swedish coach’s longtime partner Nancy Dell’Olio. Eriksson’s agent had said that guests from England, Italy and Spain were expected.
After the funeral, the casket was carried out of the church by eight men to the hearse. The guests then walked in a procession accompanying the coffin to a nearby museum where speeches and eulogies to the coach fondly known as “Svennis” were planned on an outdoor stage. A brass band played during the procession through Torsby, including the tune “You never walk alone” from the musical “Carousel” which has become the anthem of Liverpool, the club Eriksson supported since childhood.
The local soccer club Torsby IF, where Eriksson started his career in the 1960s, wrote on its webpage that “you also showed your greatness by always being yourself, the caring Svennis who talked to everyone and took the time, for big and small, asking how things were and how the football was going. We will miss you.”
