Corruption probe sullies 2020 Olympics
Tsunekazu Takeda, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee and a powerful IOC member, has again denied corruption allegations against him, suggesting on Tuesday that any guilt was with others in the bureaucracy at the Japanese body.
Takeda read a seven-minute prepared text and then took no questions from hundreds of media.
Innocent or guilty in a bribery scandal that French authorities suspect helped land the games for Tokyo, Takeda has cast a shadow on the upcoming Olympics. It also underscored failed efforts by the International Olympic Committee to clean up its bidding process with billions swirling around the preparations of every Olympics.
Tokyo is spending about $US20 billion to prepare.
"I am very sorry for having caused concern for those working very hard to prepare for Tokyo's 2020 Olympics and Paralympics," Takeda said, speaking only in Japanese.
The last Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were tumultuous from start to finish and ended eventually with the arrest of organising committee president - and Brazilian Olympic Committee president -Carlos Nuzman, in a vote-buying scandal.
Speaking Tuesday in a separate news conference, the Asahi newspaper reported Olympic Minister Yoshitaka Sakurada saying the allegations "are not very good for the image" of Japan.
IOC President Thomas Bach, speaking last month in Tokyo, called the Japanese games "the best prepared" in history. They have overcome early problems, but are now on schedule with the major concern centred around rising costs, natural disasters, and Tokyo's blistering summer heat.
Takeda, a distance member of Japan's royal family - he is great grandson of the Meiji emperor who ruled late in 19th century and into the 20th - gave only courtesy bows before and after his speech, not the low, sustained ones associated with showing deep remorse.
He acknowledged he had signed off on about $US2 million in payments to a Singapore consulting company, Black Tidings.
French investigators have linked Black Tidings to Papa Massata Diack, one of the sons of Lamine Diack, a Senegalese.
