Sport Japanese institute paid $1.3 million by Tokyo Olympic bid committee shuts operations: website

By Ami Miyazaki

© Reuters/Stoyan Nenov FILE PHOTO: Man looks at his mobile phone next to The Olympic rings in front of the Japan Olympics Museum in Tokyo

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese non-profit sports institute paid $1.3 million by the Tokyo Olympic bid committee during a campaign to secure the 2020 Games shut down all its activities at the end of December, according to a notice on its website.

The Jigoro Kano Memorial International Sport Institute, established in 2009 and run by former Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori, did not provide a reason for ceasing activities on its website.

Reuters was not immediately able to reach a representative of the non-profit by telephone or email.

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The Tokyo bid committee also paid ¥140 million ($ 1 . 3 million ) to a little-known non-profit institute run by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a powerful Nobumoto Higuchi, secretary general of the bid committee , said Takahashi earned commissions on the corporate sponsorships he collected for

The Japanese media, charged with covering the Olympics , are also on in droves including top newspapers Dentsu has acknowledged that it advised the Tokyo bid committee about possible “consultants” The latest Tokyo organizing committee budget shows IOC contributions of $ 1 . 3 billion.

Mori did not respond to a Reuters request for comment when contacted by email through the Tokyo organising committee.

The Tokyo metropolitan government, which has a seat on the institute's board, said it had not been notified of the non-profit's closure nor any changes in the group's activities.

The Tokyo bid committee paid the institute $1.3 million between 2012 and 2014, when Tokyo was lobbying to win the 2020 Games, Reuters reported last year.

A staff member at the institute told Reuters last year the money was used to hire a U.S.-based consulting firm and two individual consultants to support the Tokyo 2020 bid.

Mori, a powerful figure in Japanese sports who now heads the Tokyo Olympics organising committee, said in November he was not directly involved in the non-profit's finances and said he did not know about the money the institute received from the bid.

"It's true that I am the president of that organisation, but I wasn't directly involved in the handling of the finances," Mori said during a news conference last year.

French investigators have examined banking records and transactions by the Tokyo bid committee as part of an ongoing investigation into whether $2.3 million paid to a Singapore consultant was a bribe to win support from a key member of the International Olympic Committee for Japan.

(Reporting by Ami Miyazaki and Mari Saito; Editing by Michael Perry)