IOC asks for transcripts suggesting 2020 Olympic bid bribery

It would be nice to say lets ensure that IOC governing membership should be limited to Old World countries, but then there is Seth Splatter and company in FIFA! Better perhaps to make it easy to prosecute and/or dismiss such members that offend regardless of who they are and where they're from.

Well...might as well get to the truth...

The fiasco continues. Time to take your seats and watch it unfold, ladies and gentlemen.

Japan would've won anyways. oh ok then it doesnt matter if Japan was involved in corruption!? If this turns out to be a huge scandal Japan wont have anybody else to blame but itself. No Chinese or Koreans spreading a bad image of Japan, no Japan would have dont that all by itself. Will wait and see, bring on the popcorn this Olympic fiasco is turning out to be more entertaining than the Olympics itself. LOL

"Nothing to do with Japan's culture."

Actually, the Salt Lake City people pointed their finger directly at Japan during their scandal. They said the Japanese had set new standards in the 90s on tactics for getting the games, ie, giving expensive gifts, providing the company of "geisha" women, five-star hotels. etc. After the Americans lost, they decided to "turn Japanese" in their following bid and were nailed, while the Japanese burned their own documents.

Japan has come under fire for doing the same at the IWC in its whaling campaign. So yeah, this approach to currying the favor of officials who are supposed to be impartial is a Japanese thing.

JeffLee: "Not surprising. Japan destroyed its documents relating to the Nagano Olympics after allegations the Japanese bribed IOC officials."

Exactly! They just LOVE to burn damning documents and then claim they have no memory of it, then when backed into a corner say there's no proof (because it accidentally burned up, of course).

Now they're about to be caught up in ANOTHER scandal they thought they could get away with and it's the usual "we can't understand" crap. haha. "Integrity" indeed!

Well, back in the day Ishihara said he would account for the spending on the first Olympic bid. This never happened and he was never challenged. The media was predictably compliant then and is even more so now. We all know the way Japan functions. There is an extremely honest and well-behaved population, but a very dishonest business culture bordering on corrupt and an enormous bureaucracy that spends our money freely with no accountability. Japan probably bought lots of votes for the Olympics in various ways, just like Japan buys votes to support its whaling. The corruption is widespread and the incompetence on display is staggering. There are way too many greedy old men here and they are unaccountable to anyone. It's not only Japan or the IOC though. FIFA is just as bad, if not worse.

I sincerely hope this investigation asks some probing questions about the relationship between Hidetoshi Yamada, the Vice Chairman of the JOC and the Yakuza, who we all know to be heavily involved in the construction industry - an industry which is rubbing its hands at the juicy contracts the Olympic boondoggle offers.

https://news.vice.com/article/this-may-be-the-most-dangerous-and-most-costly-photo-in-japan

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/07/the-yakuza-olympics.html

Will we see the cancellation of the 2020 Tokyo Games? It is getting less unlikely.

Uh oh...

We are well past the time where we establish permanent homes for the Games. Athens, obviously, for the Summer Games and somewhere in the French or the Swiss Alps for the Winter Games. That's pretty much the only way to avoid the bribery that has gone on with nearly every modern Olympics since the 1980s, and we eliminate the situation that Athens, Beijing, Sochi and Tokyo found/find themselves with spending hundreds of millions of dollars on facilities that will, at best, be used infrequently after the games.

I rarely stand up for Japan on these things... but there is no such thing as a corruption-free Olympics. They were going to win anyway, and since my husband's job requires him to be there, I'm damn glad on a personal level, given the current unfortunate political situation engulfing the area.

How naive of me to think Tokyo did not venture down bribing path and the IOC had clean up it act. Really, I honestly did believed in the Tooth Fairy, but this menagerie of corrupt international governing bodies have not and will not diminish my faith in Santa.

The IOC is ready to examine allegations of possible bribery in the bidding for the 2020 Olympics.

The Olympic body said Friday it has asked the World Anti-Doping Agency’s independent commission for transcripts from its report on doping and corruption in track and field that raises the possibility that $5 million in sponsorship money was paid to help Tokyo secure the games.

I suspect this is going to be another fiasco for Japan -- like the Tokyo Games logo and the stadium design. Japan undertook this process in the supposed hopes that it would show the world it has recovered from the Fukushima disaster. But all it has demonstrated is that their government is inept, and now possibly involved in bribery. The citizens of Japan, who are footing the bill for this masive ego-stroke, deserve better.

PTownsend, looking at your link that you provide... didn't you know that Switzerland is a baseball hotbed...

So many international sports organisations have headquarters in Switzerland. I wonder why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:International_sports_bodies_based_in_Switzerland

I'd be interested to see if former Gov Ishihara's was involved. Gone .... "the end of an error" .. or another fracutured legacy hes not accountable for

Nothing to do with Japan's culture. The Olympic selection process has been corrupt for many decades now. That Japan got caught in this inquiry will certainly help bring down the country's image - and I do think the world will be shocked at how far Japan is from their vaunted image of integrity and efficiency. But if Turkey refused to pay, you can bet it wasn't because they had higher standards. They were probably just trying to get the price down.

In my lifetime I have organized many events and some of them were very difficult. This Tokyo 2020 Olympics is not only very difficult to manage but almost impossible. The Tokyo Olympics of the 60's was the real impetus to it's recovery from the devastation of the war but to me the Tokyo Olympics of 2020 will undo all that our fathers and mothers worked for in the postwar Japan.

Like all professional sport the Olympics is also contaminated with bribery etc, sadly its pretty much expected to happen, one of the reasons I stopped caring about them long ago, add in corporate "sponsorships" & its tainted as hell!

Olymic biding is a sport based on graft and influence, on top of an ability to provide. Everyone is doing "Omotenashi" then Japan is still the best host. Thankfully the show is not in Turkey.

I thought it was common knowledge that Japan bribes small African countries for votes in support of whaling and the Olympics.

"Tokyo’s bid was about Japan’s commitment to address issues around the integrity of sport.”

Er ... And provide a compact games. But commitments are seemingly flexible.

Japan would've won anyways. also it's not that safe having so many tourists in turkey this days.

Not surprising. Japan destroyed its documents relating to the Nagano Olympics after allegations the Japanese bribed IOC officials.

This time around, let's have a full investigation.

Claims of dishonesty from multiple fronts.