Photo/Illutration The head office of Dentsu Inc. on Feb. 8 (The Asahi Shimbun)

It is vital to clean out the rot and put an end to the unscrupulous structure if corruption spread to the core of the management of the Tokyo Olympics.

Prosecutors on Feb. 8 arrested four individuals, including a former senior official of the organizing committee and a former senior Dentsu Inc. official in charge of sporting events, over alleged bid-rigging of contracts for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

Also arrested were executives at two companies that were awarded contracts.

They are accused of illegally restricting business transactions in violation of the antimonopoly law.

A total of nine companies and one consortium won contracts for planning 26 test events in competitive bidding held for each venue.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s special investigation squad found that only one company bid for most of these contracts after Yasuo Mori, a former senior organizing committee official, and Dentsu effectively decided which bidder should win.

The companies and the consortium were later awarded contracts for operating the actual Olympic and Paralympic events without going through competitive bidding.

Prosecutors believe the contracts for both test and actual events were illegally awarded. More than 40 billion yen ($304.4 million) was paid to the contractors.

In its investigation into the scandal surrounding the Tokyo Games, the special investigation squad first focused on bribery allegations including those against Haruyuki Takahashi, a former organizing committee executive.

Prosecutors have indicted 15 people including Takahashi and employees at corporate sponsors.

The latest arrests indicate that the focus of the investigation has shifted from individuals and businesses that pursued ill-gotten profits to structural problems of the sporting event involving huge amounts of public funds.

The investigation should get to the bottom of the wrongdoings perpetrated.

Even before Tokyo was selected to host the Games, there were strong concerns about the expected heavy financial burden on taxpayers.

In response, organizers promised a “compact Olympics” and a “review of costs.”

If organizers took anti-competitive actions behind the scenes and pushed up costs from the stage of test events, a serious breach of trust was committed.

The total cost of hosting the Games ballooned to some 1.42 trillion yen from the estimated 730 billion yen, a figure announced for Tokyo’s bid to host the event, according to the organizing committee.

But the Board of Audit last year estimated the total at some 1.7 trillion yen, 280 billion yen higher than the committee’s final tally.

Bid-rigging is often described as a crime that does not cause visible damage to any specific victims.

But in public-financed projects, such antitrust offenses inevitably cause far-reaching damage to the taxpaying public.

No current employee of Dentsu, which was deeply involved in operating the Games, has been charged with bribery violations. But the advertising giant is suspected to have played the leading role in bid-rigging.

There is a line that must not be crossed between organizations that are highly public in nature and private-sector businesses even if they have to work for a specific project in a close partnership.

Investigators need to get to the bottom of the allegations and clarify who effectively crossed the line and how.

The facts that will emerge can help prevent collusive ties between the public and private-sector organizations, not only for sports events but also for other projects.

Why did no one raise a red flag against giving contracts for operating Olympic and Paralympic events without bidding to companies that won test-event contracts in allegedly rigged bidding?

There is no way for people who were in charge at the central government, the Tokyo metropolitan government and the Japanese Olympic Committee, as well as former top executives of the now-defunct organizing committee, to escape from the responsibility to offer convincing explanations.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 9

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