Japan’s prime minister has promised to cooperate fully with French authorities investigating suspicious payments made to a secret bank account alleged to have helped Tokyo secure the 2020 Olympics.
“I have instructed the education and sports minister to fully cooperate in the investigation,” Shinzō Abe told MPs on Monday.
He added that the education and sports minister, Hiroshi Hase, had told the Japanese Olympic Committee and officials involved in Tokyo’s bid to cooperate with the investigation into the payments, revealed by the Guardian last week.
The investigation centres on two payments, totalling at least US$2m (£1.4m), French prosecutors have said, that Tokyo’s bid committee made in July and October 2013 to Black Tidings, an account in Singapore linked to Papa Massata Diack, the son of the disgraced former world athletics chief Lamine Diack.
Black Tidings’ account is held by Ian Tan Tong Han who, according to an independent report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, was a consultant to Athletics Management and Services (AMS), a Switzerland-based firm that has a business relationship with the Japanese marketing and public relations giant Dentsu.