Japanese advertising giant Dentsu has been fined around $1.94 million for bid-rigging in advance of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
A Tokyo court handed down the fine today (January 30), with Dentsu confirming it will appeal the judgment.
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Former Dentsu executive Koji Hemmi, meanwhile, was sentenced to two years in jail, suspended for four years. He was convicted on the basis of rigging bids around contracts to operate test events in advance of Tokyo 2020 (which took place in 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic).
In a statement, Dentsu said: “The decision differs significantly from our claims. We will reassert our justifications in the appeal and request that the ruling be rectified.”
Dentsu becomes the third company convicted related to the alleged bid-rigging, and has admitted to rigging contracts worth over 500 million yen ($3.2 million). However, it has denied collusion in relation to other contracts around the games’ operations.
In addition to Dentsu, five other firms (Hakuhodo Inc., Tokyu Agency Inc., Cerespo Co., Fuji Creative Corp., and Same Two Inc.) have also been indicted for collusion around bid-rigging, between February and July 2018.
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By GlobalDataThose indictments came in March 2023, while a month earlier, Dentsu was one of three companies suspended from bidding on certain domestic government contracts amid an ongoing corruption investigation.
Tokyo hosted the summer Olympics in July and August 2021, and Dentsu was integral in both securing hosting rights and bringing in an array of domestic sponsors, which raised a record of more than $3 billion.
Dentsu’s offices were first raided in early 2022 amid allegations of corruption in the awarding of those event contracts.
In 2024, Hakuhodo was fined 200 million yen and Cerespo 280 million yen (although both firms have also appealed).
In late 2022, it was also confirmed that efforts to bring the 2030 Winter Olympics to the Japanese city of Sapporo were being paused (that event has since been allocated to the French Alps) in part because of the ongoing corruption scandal around the Tokyo Games.
