TOKYO (AP) – Leaders of Tokyo’s winning bid for the 2020 Olympics acknowledged Friday making payments to a firm in Singapore, but said the funds were for legitimate consulting fees and maintained that all bid activities were “fair and correct.”
In the months immediately before and after Tokyo was awarded the games in 2013, 2.8 million Singapore dollars ($2 million) is thought to have been transferred in two segments from a bank in Japan to the account in Singapore of a company called Black Tidings, French prosecutors said Thursday. The transactions were marked “Tokyo 2020 Olympic Game Bid.”
Ian Tan Tong Han is the holder of the Black Tidings account, which has been linked to the son of disgraced former IAAF President Lamine Diack.
“The payments mentioned in the media were a legitimate consultant’s fee paid to the service we received from Mr. Tan’s company,” former bid committee president Tsunekazu Takeda and director general Nobumuto Higuchi said in a statement on Friday. “It followed a full and proper contract and the monies were fully audited by Ernst & Young ShinNihon LLC.”
Takeda, who now serves as the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, said the consultant services included planning for the bid, advice for international lobbying, and information and media analysis.