Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - The Japanese fashion company Aoki Holdings paid less than half of the usual fee to be a sponsor of the To...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - The Japanese fashion company Aoki Holdings paid less than half of the usual fee to be a sponsor of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the Kyodo news agency reported on Thursday, one day after the arrest of the former Aoki chairman on suspicion of bribery.
The report says that Aoki Holdings paid 500 million yen to sponsor the Tokyo 2020 Games. This is less than half of what other sponsors paid.
On Wednesday, Tokyo prosecutors arrested former Aoki Holdings chairman Hironori Aoki, former Tokyo 2020 Olympics board member Haruyuki Takahashi, and two other executives on suspicion of taking bribes. Reuters wasn't able to get in touch with Aoki to ask what he thought.
TV Asahi said on Thursday that Takahashi told prosecutors he wasn't guilty of bribery. A spokesperson for the prosecutors said that they couldn't talk about the details of investigations that were still going on.
In a statement released on Thursday, Aoki Holdings said that it was fully working with prosecutors but that it couldn't say anything else because the investigation was still going on.
In a statement released on Wednesday, prosecutors said that 51 million yen had been sent from Hironori Aoki's asset management firm's bank account to the bank account of a company run by Takahashi.
Reuters reported in 2020 that Takahashi, who was paid millions of dollars to work on Tokyo's successful bid for the Olympics, said he played a key role in getting the support of a former Olympics powerbroker who was later suspected by French prosecutors of taking bribes to help Japan's bid.
Takahashi told Reuters at the time that part of his job was to lobby IOC member Lamine Diack, to whom he gave gifts like a Seiko watch and a digital camera.
Takahashi said at the time that there was nothing wrong with the money he was paid or how he spent it.
Last year, Diack died at the age of 88.
