Members of the now-defunct Tokyo Olympic organizing committee are trying to put the widening sponsorship bribery scandal to rest by denying the committee's involvement and calling it a «personal problem» caused by one former executive, Kazinform reports.
A former chairman and two other senior officials of business suit retailer Aoki Holdings Inc. admitted in court Thursday to having bribed organizing committee executive Haruyuki Takahashi, 78, to become a sponsor for last year's Olympics.
The committee has said it will cooperate with the investigation.
Takahashi, a former senior managing director of Japan's largest advertising agency, Dentsu Inc., is said to have strong ties with the International Olympic Committee.
IOC President Thomas Bach has not answered questions about the scandal, with officials around him only saying it is about an individual.
Earlier this month in Tokyo, former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who headed the organizing committee until February 2021, said he feels sorry that the bribery scandal has hurt people who love sports.
But he also insisted the problem was that of an individual, not the organizing committee or Olympic officials.
With Sapporo's bid to host the 2030 Winter Olympics in mind, the Japanese Olympic Committee, the Japan Sports Agency and other domestic organizations want to settle the bribery issue by compiling measures to prevent a recurrence of such scandals.