The bribery scandal engulfing final 12 months’s Tokyo Olympics involving former Dentsu worker, Tokyo Video games organizing committee member and highly effective behind-the-scenes fixer Haruyuki Takahashi and 5 different corporations, together with ADK, reveals no indicators of abating.
As part of the continued investigations, earlier this week Tokyo prosecutors and Japan’s Truthful Commerce Fee raided the headquarters of the nation’s second-largest promoting agency Hakuhodo over suspected bid-rigging. This follows the raid which occurred in Dentsu’s places of work on November 25.
Based on Tokyo’s public broadcaster NHK, the advert giants are being investigated on suspicion of rigging bids for contracts associated to Olympics and Paralympics occasions.
As Japan’s strongest company community, Dentsu dominates the promoting, advertising and marketing and communications ecosystem within the nation and helped to land the 2020 Video games for Tokyo. Haruyuki Takahashi, a former government at Dentsu, has been arrested 4 instances in latest months on prices of receiving bribes from numerous stakeholders and sponsors for the Video games.
At this level, prosecutors suspect rigging came about within the 26 open bids out of the overall 56 take a look at occasions deliberate in 2018. These occasions have been ultimately handed out to 9 corporations, together with Dentsu and Cerespo, in addition to a consortium with no tender course of.
The cash that exchanged palms for the alleged fixing is estimated at 500 million yen (US$3.6 million) however with the involvement of a rising variety of corporations coming to the forefront, hypothesis is rife that the contracts may have been a lot greater, probably price tens of billions of yen and extra arrests will observe because the investigation deepens.
Each Dentsu and Hakuhodo acknowledge being searched in reference to the rigging bids of Tokyo 2020. In an announcement issued to Marketing campaign, the spokesperson for Dentsu Inc says: “We proceed to completely cooperate with this investigation.”
Hakuhodo added: “We provide our most honest apologies to all events concerned on this difficulty and will probably be absolutely cooperating with the authorities. Since this pertains to the continued investigation, at this level we’re unable to present out any further data.”
The shares of dad or mum firm Dentsu Group have fallen by roughly 2.7% since information of the recent probe broke, whereas shares of the occasion firm Cerespo Co tumbled roughly 11%.
(Marketing campaign Asia-Pacific will proceed to cowl developments because the probe round Tokyo 2020 tainting advert majors unfolds.)