Documents obtained by French investigating judges show that Tokyo's bid committee for the 2020 Olympic Games paid £2.3 million dollars to a company linked to the son of a senior Olympic figure who helped ensure that African delegates voted for the Japanese city, Mediapart can reveal.
The documents, seen by Mediapart, reveal that at the time of the 2013 vote to award the games, Lamine Diack, then president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and an influential member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), “coordinated” the votes of the African IOC members so that they supported Tokyo.
They also indicate that just hours before the crucial vote in Buenos Aires, Diack's son Papa Massata Diack or 'PMD' was worried that the African members might not vote for Tokyo after all and told his father that the African IOC votes should be “locked down” during a “break”, to make sure the delegates did not opt for rival Madrid.
The investigating judges in Paris believe that this “coordination” was done in exchange for 2.3 million dollars, paid in two instalments from the Tokyo 2020 bid committee just before and after the 2013 vote to an offshore firm called Black Tidings. According to the investigation the main beneficiary of this company, which is registered in Singapore, is Papa Massata Diack.
It was back in December 2018 that French investigating judges Renaud Van Ruymbeke (replaced after his retirement by Bénédicte de Perthuis) and Stéphanie Tacheau had placed the former president of the Tokyo 2020 committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, and one of the most powerful figures in sport in Japan, under investigation for “active corruption”. Three months later Takeda was forced to resign from his functions as president of the Japanese Olympic Committee and as a member of the IOC.
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Mediapart also understands that in March 2019 the judges placed Lamine Diack under investigation for “passive corruption” in relation to the award of several major sporting competitions, including the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
When questioned by Mediapart, Lamine Diack's son Papa Massata Diack or 'PMD' said he had no links with Black Tidings of which he is “neither a shareholder or partner”. Officially the company belongs to Singapore consultant Tan Tong Han.
But the judges in Paris have gathered evidence suggesting that Tan is a frontman for Papa Massata Diack. An analysis of Black Tidings' bank accounts show that a large part of the money in the end benefited PMD. The two men have been involved in two other alleged corruption affairs, including the laundering of money arising from the Russian athletics doping affair (see here) and the award of the 2015 World Championships athletics event to Beijing. An executive at the IAAF – which is now known as World Athletics – told investigators that Tan was Papa Massata Diack's “assistant”.
The pair have known each other since 2009 when Tan was part of the Beijing 2015 athletics bid committee. According to the same IAAF executive, PMD later introduced Tan to the Japanese group Dentsu. This huge advertising firm was in charge of the marketing rights for the IAAF, but frequently sub-licensed the selling of them to Papa Massata Diack, who thus received commissions with the agreement of his father. This was how Tan and PMD together negotiated the sponsorship deal for Beijing 2015 with the group Chinois Sinopec.
In 2013 Dentsu were thus informed of the close links between PMD and Tan. The Japanese group also faced a conflict of interest: it was both an active supporter of Tokyo's 2020 candidacy and also a privileged partner of the IAAF and PMD, whose father Lamine Diack was one of the voters who was going to decide on the award of the 2020 Olympic Games.
In the spring of 2013 the Tokyo bid committee received a proposal from Black Tidings, represented by Tan Tong Han, to use their services. In mid-June of that year the president of the Tokyo committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, met with Kiyoshi Nakamura, an executive from Dentsu, to ask him if he should hire Tan.
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Nakamura highly recommended Tan, whom he described as an “extremely competent lobbyist” who benefited from “influence with the IAAF”and was able to “contact members of the IOC belonging to the IAAF and affiliated members of the IOC, which would be extremely advantageous for the candidacy”.
Tsunekazu Takeda was convinced. He negotiated with Tan Tong Han the payment of 2.3 million dollars to Black Tidings. An initial contract for 950,000 dollars was signed on July 25th 2013. It was agreed verbally that the balance would only be paid if Tokyo was awarded the Olympic Games. Tsunekazu Takeda told investigators from the Japanese Olympic Committee that he was completely unaware of the links between Tan and Papa Massata Diack.
But just after the contract was signed, both Lamine Diack and his son PMD started doing all they could to favour Tokyo's candidacy. The operation started at the beginning of August 2013 during the World Championships athletics event in Moscow which was attended by several members of the IOC. On August 9th Lamine Diack met Tsunekazu Takeda at the Radisson Hotel and expressed his support for the Tokyo bid.
Tsunekazu Takeda, the president of the Tokyo committee, has acknowledged that Lamine Diack introduced him to his son Papa Massata Diack in Moscow. The IAAF president's own diary also details a meeting held on August 16th with Papa Massata Diack and Kiyoshi Nakamura, the Dentsu executive who had advised the Tokyo committee to hire Black Tidings.
'It has to be locked down during the break'
On September 2nd 2013, just five days before the crucial vote on the 2020 Games, Papa Massata Diack sent his father an email entitled “Rising Sun” with a report attached which had just been sent to him by the Tokyo bid committee. This document set out, continent by continent, the number of voters who Tokyo thought they had convinced, and listed six members of the IOC with whom the Japanese “needed help”.
Then on September 4th, Papa Massata Diack flew to Buenos Aires where the 115 members of the IOC were to choose between Madrid, Istanbul and Tokyo to stage the 2020 Games. Le Monde has revealed that on September 6th, the eve of the vote, Lamine Diack took part in a meeting which included ten or so African voters, to whom he announced his preference for Tokyo. “It went round the table. As no one reacted, I suppose that they were all in agreement for Tokyo,” the president of the IAAF later told Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke.
On September 7th, just hours before the vote, Papa Massata Diack wrote to his father to warn him about the intervention of the Kuwaiti sheikh Ahmed al-Fahad al-Sabah, one of the most influential members of the IOC. “It seems that Sheikh Ahmed is in the process of doing all he can to get the Africans to vote for Madrid!!! It has to be locked down during the break,” wrote PMD.
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Tokyo won the vote with some ease, however, picking up 42 votes in the first round and then beating Istanbul 60 votes to 36 in the second round. The next day the CEO of Dentsu thanked Lamine Diack for his “decisive” support in the victory. This congratulatory email is revealing. It was sent by Dentsu to Papa Massata Diack, who then sent it to his father, copying in Tan Tong Han, his suspected frontman and manager of Black Tidings, the company hired by the Tokyo 2020 committee.
As Tokyo had won, Black Tidings were owed the balance of the scheduled payment, a total of 1.37 million dollars. A new contract was duly signed on October 4th 2013 by the president of the Tokyo committee, Tsunekazu Takeda. Officially the money was paid in exchange for the completion of a report which analysed the results of the vote.
“In reality, as the Japanese committee investigation revealed, the second contract was just dressing designed to cover the supplementary fees linked to obtaining a favourable vote from the IOC,” write the French investigating judges in a document seen by Mediapart. That was in fact what the deputy director general of Tokyo's bid committee told the investigators working for the Japanese Olympic Committee.
The report carried out by Black Tidings in relation to the second contract does, however, contain some interesting information. This document shows that “Lamine Diack coordinated the African votes and supported Tokyo. It is even stated in it that in March 2013 certain African members supported Istanbul, but they were all persuaded to transfer their selection to Tokyo in view of Mr Diack's position,” write the judges.
Contacted by Mediapart, Lamine Diack, Papa Massata Diack and Tsunekazu Takeda did not respond. Dentsu told us that it had given its advice to the Tokyo 2020 committee about “several consultants” who had offered their services without giving more details.
When questioned by Japanese judges in 2017 at the request of French judges, Tsunekazu Takeda stated that he had not read the Black Tidings report at the time, but had been informed that it contained “some concrete and invaluable information on which of the IOC members supported the candidacy of which city”. After reading it the committee president said it supported his view and said that “the additional consulting contract that the bid committee had signed with the company Black Tidings was meaningful”.
It was certainly very profitable for Papa Massata Diack and Tan Tong Han. Having received the 2.3 million dollars from the Tokyo committee, Black Tidings sent 547,000 dollars to PMD via accounts in Senegal. The company also bought a Porsche for 126,000 euros and paid 230,000 euros to a notary or legal official in Senegal, paid 65,000 euros to the travel agency used by PMD, and paid a bill of 72,000 dollars at a jewellers in Dubai. Meanwhile Tan Tong Han received 140,000 dollars from Black Tidings.
The investigation overseen in 2016 by the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC), which was carried out by two lawyers and an accountant, considered that the contracts with Black Tidings were legal because the heads of the bid committee said they had not been aware that this company was linked to the IAAF president's son. So the payments could only constitute what they called “private corruption” which was not punishable under Japanese law.
The Japanese legal system came to the same conclusion. So they pursued no investigation of their own and carried out the acts of investigation asked for by the French judges without obliging any of the parties concerned to cooperate, operating on the basis of goodwill.
After Tokyo's triumph in September 2013 its bid committee was dissolved, as is standard practice. But its managers made sure they cleaned up after them. According to the JOC's report the information stored on computers was “destroyed” as well as “paper documents” apart from “essential information”. It said that “each computer” was later “destroyed by an external commercial operator”.
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- The French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter