Oversight commissioners lambasted the organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for numerous bribery and bid-rigging scandals and leaving "significant tasks to tackle related to governance" on June 6. 

The audit and inspection commissioners of the Tokyo metropolitan government published their assessment in a report of around 100 pages.

Along with a major bribery scandal, the report described the alleged bid-rigging in connection with the Tokyo Games as "regrettable."

Between December 2020 and April 2023, the commissioners assessed the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee’s operations on 10 topics.

The topics included the committee’s operational structure and the appropriateness of the procurement process.

The assessment fell within the auditors’ realm because the Tokyo metropolitan government partly funded the organizing committee.

The five commissioners consist of Tokyo metropolitan assembly members and outside experts.

A total of 15 people has been indicted in a series of corruption scandals related to the Summer Games, which were held in 2021.

Three former executives of men’s apparel company Aoki Holdings Inc. and two former senior officials of advertising agency ADK Holdings Inc. have been convicted and given suspended sentences for bribery.

They bribed Haruyuki Takahashi, 79, a former board member of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee, to be awarded contracts related to the Games.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office has indicted six companies including advertising giants Dentsu Inc. and Hakuhodo DY Holdings Inc. and seven individuals including a former senior official of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee over alleged bid-rigging related to the Game’s test events.

The report pointed out that an employee of a company that bid on a contract to plan a test event was sent to work for the organizing committee’s department that was responsible for preparing specifications for such a contract.

The report said that this resulted in “situations prone to conflicts of interest.”

It said that “thoroughly preventing conflicts of interest” is necessary for the operation of a similar organization in the future.

The organizing committee conducted competitive bidding for 26 contracts to plan the test events.

The report said that only one company bid for 17 of the 26 contracts.

Therefore, “It is difficult to say” that there was enough competition in the process, the report said.

It also pointed out that a panel formed within the committee to select companies to plan the test events only consisted of the committee staff.

The report said that improving the transparency of such a panel by adding outsiders to its members, for example, will be necessary when a similar organization is formed in the future.

The report revealed that the organizing committee gave its senior officials training on compliance issues including bid-rigging to prepare for planning and executing the test events.

However, the committee didn’t give many of its executives such training “because they were part-time executives” of the committee.

The report said that it is possible that this was “the indirect cause for illegal activities committed by the committee’s former executives.”

The Asahi Shimbun contacted the liquidator responsible for completing the organizing committee’s remaining tasks for a comment on the report.

The liquidator said, “We take the contents (of the report) seriously. We would like to conduct our work appropriately to complete the liquidation (of the committee), while cooperating with the Tokyo metropolitan government.”

The organizing committee was dissolved last year.

SOME PORTIONS OF THE GAMES PRAISED

The report also saw a positive side to the Tokyo Games.

It praised how organizers held the Games amid the COVID-19 pandemic by taking measures such as postponing the event by one year, holding the Games with no spectators, in principle, and refunding the payments for 5.41 million tickets because of the postponement.

It said such measures were “quick and appropriate responses” to the situations at the time.

The report acknowledged that the organizers simplified the event by taking measures such as scaling down the attendance of the event by those involved in the organization of the Games.

It said that the organizers operated the event’s venue “without an issue under the unprecedented situations.”

The Tokyo 2020 committee estimated the cost for holding the Games at 734 billion yen ($5.27 billion) when it bid for the event.

The report praised the phased review and reduction of the costs by the organizers as “spontaneous, flexible and efficient financial control.”

OTHERS SENTENCED IN GAMES SCANDAL

In the latest court case over the bribery scandals, the Tokyo District Court on June 6 handed the former presidents of a toy company suspended sentences.

Taiji Sekiguchi, 50, a former president of the Sun Arrow toy company, and Yoshihiro Sekiguchi, 75, Taiji’s father and also a former president of the company, were both sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years.

According to the ruling, the two men asked Takahashi to enable the signing of a licensing contract that would allow the company to manufacture and sell soft Olympic mascot toys, as well as the promotion of those products.

As a thank you, they transferred a total of around 2.24 million yen to Takahashi through a dormant company on six occasions between January 2020 and April 2021.