A bid-rigging scandal ensnarling the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee is shedding light on members' inexperience and inability in handling such an international sporting extravaganza.

Toshiro Muto, CEO of the committee, was new to organizing sporting events, with a background as a former top bureaucrat at the Finance Ministry.

Other key committee posts were held by individuals who formerly worked for the central or Tokyo metropolitan governments or those on loan from there.

There was almost no one on the committee’s senior level with previous experience in operating the Summer Games or international sports events.

That may be a contributing factor to the continuing scandal, as a committee member and three company executives were arrested on Feb. 8 in connection to bid-rigging for contracts related to Games' test events. 

The lack of experience in operating a major sports event is in sharp contrast with the London Olympics organizers.

In the 2012 Games, many members of the organizing committee were drawn from around the world, regardless of their nationality, bringing rich backgrounds and expertise in running large-scale sporting events.

But the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee was reluctant to bring overseas talent aboard to compensate for its lack of such staff. It wanted to curb personnel costs and the language barrier also stood in the way.

As a result, there were only a handful of committee officials who possessed the know-how to run sporting events.

One was Yasuo Mori, who was arrested on Feb. 8 on suspicion of colluding to rig bidding for the test events. He was originally from the Japan Association of Athletics Federations.

The committee had to rely on Mori, 55, for the selection of companies operating test events that require highly specialized knowledge of each of the competitions.

The Tokyo Olympics hosted a record 33 sporting events, a formidable challenge for an organizer with a limited pool of staff familiar with how to operate international competitions.

“Hosting even a single event at the world championship level is a challenge,” a former senior official at the committee said. “Running 33 such events simultaneously makes the task exceedingly complex. So, we took it for granted at the committee that events should be handled by companies with a track record in each field.”

The committee enlisted a panel of outside experts check on the procurement process. But the panel only studied the content of the final contracts with successful bidders, not the selection process in the tenders.

Mori had been active as a middle-distance runner until he graduated from college. After graduation, he joined Tokyu Corp., a railway operator in Tokyo, in urban development projects.

In 2004, he quit the company to work for the Japan Association of Athletics Federations. He also served as a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee and the Tokyo Marathon Foundation in the meantime.

Mori joined the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic organizing committee in 2014 to lead the committee’s operations bureau. 

A former senior official with the committee rated Mori highly.

“He was extremely competent in his business ability and rich experiences with sporting events,” the official said. “It would have been impossible to stage the Summer Games if there had not been a person like Mori.”

According to individuals familiar with the internal affairs with the organizing committee, Mori grew anxious about the operations of some venues for minor sporting events, given the limited preparation periods.

He visited companies to request that they participate in the tenders for test events.

When the deadline for submitting bids approached, he called the potential bidders to confirm that they would be participating, which they reassured him they would.  

One of the three other officials under arrest was Koji Henmi, 55, former assistant director of advertising behemoth Dentsu Inc.’s sports division. Henmi had a long history of organizing sporting events.

Landing a position to handle the Tokyo Games in 2016, he was Dentsu’s contact person for related events. He listened to other companies’ intentions and preferences in the tender process and closely communicated with Dentsu employees on loan to the committee about the events.

After the Summer Games ended in August 2021, Mori became an adviser to event production company Cerespo Co., a bidder that won the most contracts in the tenders of the test events.

Yoshiji Kamata, a third official arrested, was a managing director of Cerespo.

“They live in a close-knit circle,” an official close to the organizing committee said.

In the years ahead, Japan is scheduled to host a multitude of international sporting competitions with the injections of huge amounts of taxpayer money, which could similarly put great demands on local officials who have little or no experience in staging such events. 

This summer, Fukuoka will host the World Aquatics Championships. In 2025, Tokyo will be the venue for the World Athletics Championships. The following year, Aichi Prefecture will host the Asian Games. 

(This story was compiled from reports by Shuhei Nomura, Takashi Uematsu and Hikaru Yokoyama.)