France probes Tokyo Games bid
Print Edition
FRENCH prosecutors said yesterday that US$2 million tied to Tokyo’s winning bid for the 2020 Olympics was apparently paid to an account linked to the son of the disgraced former IAAF president in the months immediately before and after the Japanese capital won the games.
The French financial prosecutor’s office said it has been told of payments totaling 2.8 million Singapore dollars that were marked “Tokyo 2020 Olympic Game Bid,” from a Japanese bank to the Black Tidings company in Singapore.
The Singapore account is thought to have been held by a close friend of Papa Massata Diack, the son of former IAAF President Lamine Diack. The son is being sought by Interpol and the father is under investigation in France.
The French prosecutors probing suspected corruption by the Diacks and associates said they were told the transfers occurred in July and October 2013. Tokyo was chosen in September 2013 as the 2020 host, beating Madrid and Istanbul in a vote of the International Olympic Committee. As an IOC member at the time, the elder Diack had a vote. He was also a high-profile figure who could influence blocs of IOC votes.
Black Tidings, an apparent shell company in Singapore, has been linked by French prosecutors and a World Anti-Doping Agency-led investigation to Papa Massata Diack, who worked as a marketing consultant for the International Association of Athletics Federations, the governing body of track and field that his father ran for 16 years.
In January, a WADA-commissioned probe of IAAF corruption identified the holder of the Black Tidings account as Ian Tan Tong Han. It said Tan is so close to Papa Massata Diack that he named his child, born in 2014, “Massata”.
Papa Massata Diack is wanted in France on bribery and money-laundering charges. The 50-year-old is believed to be living in his native Senegal, out of reach of French magistrates. The elder Diack, who quit in August as IAAF president, is accused by prosecutors of pocketing about 1 million euros (US$1.1 million) from bribes in exchange for covering up doping cases. He is in France, forbidden from leaving while the probe is on.
In Tokyo, Olympic organizers denied any knowledge of the alleged payments. The Guardian in Britain first reported the suspected transfers to Black Tidings.
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