Tokyo Olympics: €1.3m payment to secret account raises questions over 2020 Games
• Alleged payment believed to be under scrutiny by French police
• Pressure on IOC to investigate links between Diack regime and Olympic bids
Black Tidings explained: the account at the heart of the IAAF scandal.
Exclusive by Owen Gibson
@owen_g
Wednesday 11 May 2016 15.58 BST Last modified on Thursday 12 May 2016 01.05 BST
Exclusive Owen Gibson
A seven-figure payment from the Tokyo Olympic bid team to an account
linked to the son of the disgraced former world athletics chief Lamine Diack was apparently made during Japan’s successful race to host the 2020 Games, the Guardian has learned.
The alleged payment of about €1.3m (£1m), now believed to be under
French police scrutiny, will increase pressure on the International
Olympic Committee to investigate properly links between Diack’s regime
and the contest to host its flagship event. It also raises serious
questions over Tokyo’s winning bid, awarded in 2013.
Related: Papa Massata Diack: Tokyo bid claims the latest of an avalanche of allegations | Owen Gibson
Any suggestion that votes could have been were bought will be hugely
embarrassing for the IOC, which has set great store by the probity of
its bidding process since reforms following the bribery scandal which that erupted that preceded the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.
Diack Sr was an IOC member between 1999 and 2013, becoming an honorary member in 2014 before resigning as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in November last year after
allegations he had accepted more than €1m in bribes to cover up
positive Russian doping tests. He is now prevented from leaving France
while prosecutors there investigate corruption at athletics’ governing
body.
In March, the Guardian revealed that the French investigation had widened to include the bidding races for the 2016 and 2020 Olympics.
It is now understood that among transactions under suspicion are
payments totalling about €1.3m apparently sent from the Tokyo 2020 bid,
or those acting on their behalf, directly to the Black Tidings secret
bank account in Singapore. The account is linked to Lamine Diack’s son,
Papa Massata Diack, who was employed by the IAAF as a marketing consultant.
Latest revelation
Lamine Diack,
IAAF president from 1999 to last year, was still an influential IOC
member in 2013 when Tokyo beat fellow bidders Istanbul and Madrid.
Black Tidings is at the heart of the allegations of institutionalised corruption at the IAAF over more than a decade.
An independent report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency
(Wada) and published in January showed how Diack and his marketing
consultant sons, Papa Massata and Khalil, joined up with the lawyer
Habib Cissé to act “as an informal illegitimate governance structure”
of the IAAF.
The Guardian had earlier revealed that Papa Massata Diack, who had
carte blanche to seek sponsorship deals in developing markets under an
agreement with marketing partner Dentsu, appeared to request $5m (£3.5m) from Qatar at a time when it was bidding for the 2017 world athletics championships and the 2020 Olympics.
In January, the Guardian revealed that Papa Massata Diack was
apparently involved in 2008 in a scheme to deliver “parcels” to six
influential members of the IOC at a time when Doha, Qatar, was trying
to bid for the 2016 Olympics.
Related: Tokyo Olympic Games corruption claims bring scandal back to the IOC | Sean Ingle
But the latest revelations are perhaps the most troubling yet for the
IOC and will send shockwaves through the Olympic movement at a time
when its president, Thomas Bach, has repeatedly held it up as an example of probity to other troubled sporting organisations including Fifa and the IAAF.
Asked about the alleged payment, believed to have been made in more
than one tranche before and after the Games were secured, the Japanese
Olympic Committee – which oversaw the bid – said its press team was
away on business for a week and was unable to respond.
The Tokyo 2020 organising committee said it had no knowledge of what
went on during the bid period. A spokeswoman said: “The Tokyo 2020
Organising Committee has no means of knowing these allegations. We
believe that the Games were awarded to Tokyo because the city presented
the best bid.”
The allegations come at a difficult time for the IOC, which is under
pressure over this summer’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics amid a host of practical and political issues and locked in an ongoing battle to persuade potential bidding cities that the Games remain a worthwhile prize.
The seven-figure payment from Tokyo 2020 also raises questions about
the role of Dentsu, the Japanese marketing giant that has an
all-encompassing sponsorship contract with the IAAF that runs until
2029, having been unilaterally extended by Diack in the final months of
his presidency.
The report by Wada’s independent commission,
chaired by Dick Pound, detailed how the Black Tidings account was held
by Ian Tan Tong Han, who was a consultant to Athlete Management and
Services, a Dentsu Sport subsidiary based in Lucerne, Switzerland, that
was set up to market and deliver the commercial rights granted to it by
the IAAF.
Computer analysis revealed that Tan had regular high-level access to
IAAF officials including Lamine Diack and was “integrated into the IAAF
at the executive level” and “appeared to be part of the informal
governance system for the IAAF”.
The bank account
Tan was so close to Papa Massata Diack that in 2014 he named his
newborn child Massata. The report said Tan appeared to have ongoing
business interests related to the Diacks in Singapore and Senegal. Papa
Massata Diack remains in Senegal, despite an Interpol notice issued for
his arrest.
In response to questions from the Guardian, aA Dentsu spokesman said it
had no knowledge of any Black Tidings payment and Tan was never
employed as a consultant. One of the world’s largest marketing
companies, iIt has previously said that Papa Massata Diack was not
employed as a consultant by Dentsu and that his contract was with the
IAAF.
The Black Tidings account first came to prominence when it emerged that the account was the channel for a €300,000 refund paid to Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova in March 2014 after a botched attempt to cover up a positive drugs test.
The IAAF’s independent ethics commission began investigating the affair
later that year and in a damning 170-page report this January banned four senior officials, including Papa Massata Diack and its former anti-doping chief Gabriel Dollé, over the corruption and extortion racket.
Cissé, Diack Sr’s former legal adviser, was not sanctioned by the IAAF
and is understood to contest the findings in Pound’s report, having not
been interviewed by its investigators.
The Pound report points out that Black Tidings in Hindi means Black Marketing or, literally, to “Launder Black Money”.
Sources believe “tens of millions” of euros passed through the account.
Two separate, independent sources with knowledge of the investigation
have confirmed the seven-figure payment from the Tokyo 2020 bid is
being investigated.
Possible wrongdoing in the 2020 race was referred to in a footnote to
Pound’s report that suggested Lamine Diack dropped his support for
Istanbul and switched to Tokyo because a Japanese sponsor signed a deal
with the IAAF.
At the time, Tokyo 2020 said the claims were “beyond our understanding”
and Istanbul’s bid said it did not believe it was a factor in their
defeat. The IOC said it would examine a transcript of the conversation
on which the claims were based.
Papa Massata Diack met police for seven hours earlier this year.
However, the authorities have said he will not be deported from
Senegal. He told the Guardian: “These allegations are currently under
investigation by the French police and in the Court of Justice. I do
not wish to make any comment as I am also part of this legal process.”
The IOC, which will meet in Rio for its 129th session before the summer
Games, said its chief ethics and compliance officer had been in contact
with Wada and the French magistrates investigating the IAAF case since
its inception, and that the IOC was now a civil party to the French
justice procedure.
A spokesman added: “The IOC’s chief ethics and compliance officer will
continue to be in contact with all interested parties to clarify any
alleged improper conduct. The IOC will not comment any further on the
elements of the investigations at this stage.”
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