Photo/Illutration The Olympic monument outside the National Stadium in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Advertising giant Dentsu Group Inc. has been fined 300 million yen ($1.94 million) after being found guilty of violating the Anti-Monopoly Law in connection with the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games bid-rigging scandal.

In the Jan. 30 ruling, the Tokyo District Court also sentenced former Dentsu Inc. official Koji Henmi, 57, to two years in prison, suspended for four years.

The fine and prison term matched the prosecutors' demands.

Dentsu and other companies separately won contracts for planning the test events held at each competition venue, totaling 570 million yen.

These companies later received contracts for the implementation of the test events and the operation of the main Games, valued at a hefty 43.15 billion yen, through noncompetitive, negotiated agreements.

During the trial, Dentsu acknowledged its involvement in bid-rigging for the initial test event planning projects. However, it denied any role in the organizers' decision to award the remaining projects to the same contractors as the initial ones.

Prosecutors alleged that the organizers secretly agreed with Dentsu and others to automatically grant the remaining projects to them.

The focus of the trial has been on these latter projects, which represented 99 percent of the total value of all the relevant contracts.

In February 2023, a former organizer, six companies including Dentsu, and six officials from these companies were indicted.  

The former organizer’s conviction was finalized in December 2023.

The court ruling pointed out that the former organizer and the officials had colluded, and that the former organizer provided other companies' bidding documents to Dentsu to ensure it would win the contract.

The judge said the motivation for the former organizer was to prevent the bid from failing and guarantee that the desired companies received the contracts.

Among the six companies, Hakuhodo Inc., Japan’s second-largest advertising agency next to Dentsu, and event production company Cerespo Co. also received guilty verdicts. Both have appealed the rulings.