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Eugene

(61,592 posts)
Wed May 11, 2016, 07:51 PM May 2016

Tokyo Olympics: €1.3m payment to secret account raises questions over 2020 Games

Source: The Guardian

Tokyo Olympics: €1.3m payment to secret account raises questions over 2020 Games

• Alleged payment believed to be under scrutiny by French police
• Pressure on IOC to investigate links between Diack regime and Olympic bids

Exclusive by Owen Gibson
Wednesday 11 May 2016 15.58 BST

A seven-figure payment from the Tokyo Olympic bid team to an account linked to the son of the disgraced former world athletics chief Lamine Diack was apparently made during Japan’s successful race to host the 2020 Games, the Guardian has learned.

The alleged payment of about €1.3m (£1m), now believed to be under French police scrutiny, will increase pressure on the International Olympic Committee to investigate properly links between Diack’s regime and the contest to host its flagship event. It also raises serious questions over Tokyo’s winning bid, awarded in 2013.

Any suggestion that votes could have been were bought will be hugely embarrassing for the IOC, which has set great store by the probity of its bidding process since reforms following the bribery scandal which that erupted that preceded the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

Diack Sr was an IOC member between 1999 and 2013, becoming an honorary member in 2014 before resigning as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in November last year after allegations he had accepted more than €1m in bribes to cover up positive Russian doping tests. He is now prevented from leaving France while prosecutors there investigate corruption at athletics’ governing body.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/11/tokyo-olympics-payment-diack-2020-games
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