Ex-Tokyo Games Exec Found Guilty over Bid-Rigging

Jiji Press

16:37 JST, December 12, 2023

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday sentenced a former senior official of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committee to two years in prison, suspended for four years, over bid-rigging linked to the 2021 Games.

Presiding Judge Kenji Yasunaga handed down the sentence to Yasuo Mori, 56, for violating the antimonopoly law. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of two years in prison.

It is the first ruling among the cases against seven people, including Mori, and six companies, such as advertising agencies Dentsu Group Inc. and Hakuhodo Inc., indicted over the alleged bid-rigging.

Mori has admitted to the allegations and apologized in trial hearings but has said that “there would have been chaos without adjustment to predetermine contract winners.”

According to the indictment, Mori conspired with Koji Henmi, 56, former assistant head of the sports department of Dentsu Inc., now a Dentsu Group unit, and others between February and July 2018 to determine in advance the winners of contracts for planning Games-related test events and other work. They colluded so that only the predetermined winners bid for contracts.