Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Aug 17: Tokyo Olympics board member and three other men connected to the scandal were all detained on suspicion of accepting bribes on Wednesday. The high-street business suit retailer Aoki Holdings, an official partner of the 2020 Games that were postponed due to a pandemic the previous year, is accused of giving Haruyuki Takahashi $380,000.
According to Tokyo Prosecutors Office documents obtained by AFP, the 78-year-old was detained together with Aoki Chairman Hironori Aoki (83) and two other executives from the retailer.
In more than 50 transactions between October 2017 and March 2022, Takahashi allegedly had a total of 51 million yen ($380,000 at current exchange rates) transferred to the bank account of a company he owns.
According to Japanese media, Takahashi’s Tokyo house was seized by authorities last month, and searches were also performed at the homes of the chairman of Aoki and the defunct Tokyo 2020 organising committee. The arrests followed those investigations.
From June 2014, Takahashi, a former CEO of Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising company, was on the board of Tokyo 2020.
He was supposedly treated as a kind of public servant during that time and was not allowed to receive payments or gifts associated with his job.
The organising group for Tokyo 2020 ceased activities last month, although it continues to exist to handle assets and liabilities. The Covid-19 outbreak caused an unusual one-year delay in the Tokyo Olympics, which finally took place in 2021. Due to the prohibition on supporters due to the rising viral infections in Japan, stadiums were largely vacant.
