Japanese police on Wednesday carried out new searches in a case of questionable payments to a senior official of the organization of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games from a Japanese company that later became an official sponsor of the event, said the Japanese press.

According to local media, searches were carried out at the home of the former chairman of the business suit chain Aoki Holdings, Hironori Aoki, 83, and at the former offices of the Tokyo 2021 organizing committee, at the seat of the metropolitan government of the Japanese capital.

A suspicious payment of 320,000 euros

The police had already raided the home of Haruyuki Takahashi, 78, a former senior official of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee (disbanded since last month), on Tuesday.

This former executive of the Japanese advertising giant Dentsu is suspected of having received in 2017 the equivalent of more than 320,000 euros from Aoki Holdings after the signing of a contract between his consulting company and this group, which became 2018 an official partner of the Tokyo Olympics.

Haruyuki Takahashi was not expected to accept any money or gifts in connection with his role as an Olympics board member since 2014. He, however, denied any conflict of interest in the deal with Aoki Holdings last week in the Japanese press.

Asked by AFP, the Tokyo prosecutor's office refrained from making the slightest comment on this investigation.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on Wednesday that this case was "extremely regrettable" and that she intended to follow its development "carefully".

She said in front of journalists that she had asked former members of the Olympic Games organizing committee for their "full cooperation in the investigation".

Our file on the 2021 Olympics

Suspicions of corruption are already floating over the conditions for awarding the 2021 Olympics to Tokyo.

In March 2019, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee Tsunekazu Takeda resigned a few months after being indicted by French justice.

Tsunekazu Takeda is suspected of having paid Black Tidings, a company based in Singapore, before and after the designation of the Japanese capital by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

According to French investigators, Black Tidings is an “empty shell” leading to Papa Massata Diack, the son of former Senegalese boss of world athletics and former influential member of the IOC Lamine Diack (who died in December 2021 at age 88).

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