Former IAAF President Lamine Diack was convicted in a French court last week of accepting bribesGETTY IMAGES
The Tokyo Games are "facing renewed scrutiny over allegations that the city's bid to host the games was secured by millions of dollars in bribes laundered through the international banking system," according to Lehren, Fitzpatrick, Martinez, Ing & Edrissi of NBCNEWS.com. A team of French prosecutors and police investigators is "investigating allegations of corruption associated with the Tokyo Olympics bid." The inquiry "grew out of a five-year investigation into Russian bribes that allowed athletes to compete despite positive doping tests, which resulted in multiple convictions by a French court last week." Both the case that was just decided and the Tokyo Games investigation "center on payments made to a Senegalese father and son duo," former IAAF President Lamine Diack and his son, Papa Massata Diack.
ONGOING INVESTIGATION: Jean-Francois Bohnert, the head of France's National Financial Prosecutor's Office, said that the Olympics bribery investigation is "ongoing and that it is too early to determine whether additional sporting events were involved." He "did not provide an estimate of when the investigation might be complete." The Diacks, who "deny wrongdoing, were convicted last week by a French court of accepting bribes in exchange for stonewalling punishments for Russian athletes who tested positive for doping." One document "traces the flow" of $2.3M "from a bank account belonging to the Tokyo Organizing Committee at the time it was trying to secure the games." The funds "went to an account in Singapore controlled by a friend of Papa Massata Diack's shortly before and after the 2013 vote selecting Tokyo as the host city for the 2020 Games" (NBCNEWS.com, 9/25).
