★ The Sports Examiner: Chronicling the key competitive, economic and political forces shaping elite sport and the Olympic Movement.★
★ To get the daily Sports Examiner Recap by e-mail: sign up here! ★
≡ SPOTLIGHT ≡
The continuing court drama over one of the major Tokyo 2020 financial scandals saw Tokyo prosecutors ask for a ¥300 million fine (about $2.09 million U.S.) last week against Dentsu, one of the world’s iconic advertising and marketing agencies.
The sentencing portion of the case also had prosecutors telling the Tokyo District Court that Koji Hemni, 57, the former deputy head of the Dentsu sports department, should be imprisoned for two years for his role in coordinating the rigged bids for test-event operations contracts.
This is the larger of the two major Tokyo 2020 scandals, with former deputy executive director of the Tokyo 2020 Games Operations Bureau, Yasuo Mori – who has pled guilty in the case – and Henmi coordinating the bidding program for 26 test events bid for in 2018, which led to much larger contracts for venue management during the Tokyo Games. The test-event contracts involved ¥538 million (about $3.75 million U.S. today) and the Games venue management agreements were worth about ¥43 billion (about $300.0 million U.S. today).
Five companies were involved, including Dentsu, ad agencies Hakuhodo, Inc. and Tokyu Agency, Inc., and event management companies Cerespo Co., Fuji Creative Corporation and Same Two, Inc. Dentsu was alleged as the ringleader of the project.
Defense attorneys for Henmi asked for a suspended sentence, with the court scheduling a 30 January 2025 sentencing date. Henmi told the court that he was trying to help the Tokyo 2020 organizers and was not colluding for Dentsu’s benefit, but to assure the success of the test events.
Dentsu’s attorneys told the court that while Henmi was involved in the arrangements for the test-event contracts, the 2020 Games venue management contracts were bid independently and without collusion.
Ad agency Hakuhodo, Inc., was fined ¥200 million (~$1.40 million U.S.) last July and its former president was sentenced to 18 months, but with the sentence suspended for three years. Both sanctions have been appealed.
Mori, the “inside man” on the contracts, was sentenced last December to two years in prison, suspended for four years.
The bid-rigging scandal is separate, but much larger than the bribery-for-sponsorship program allegedly run by former Tokyo 2020 Executive Board member Haruyuki Takahashi, also a former Dentsu senior director. That matter is continuing in the courts.
¶
★ Receive our exclusive, weekday TSX Recap by e-mail by clicking here.
★ Sign up a friend to receive the TSX Recap by clicking here.
★ Please consider a donation here to keep this site going.
For our updated, 547-event International Sports Calendar for the rest of 2024 and beyond, by date and by sport, click here!
