TOKYO (AP) — An investigation by French prosecutors into alleged vote-buying connected with Tokyo winning the 2020 Olympics has raised questions about one of Japan’s most powerful companies, the giant advertising and marketing agency Dentsu Inc.
From its 48-story headquarters in central Tokyo, Dentsu is the exclusive marketing agency for the next Summer Olympics, landing that contract a year after the International Olympic Committee awarded the Games to Japan in 2013.
The agency, which is Japan’s largest advertising and marketing company, has helped line up a record-breaking $3 billion in domestic sponsorship deals — 58 local sponsors and counting. That’s more than twice the domestic sponsorship revenue as any previous Olympics, illustrating Dentsu’s unrivaled business and political connections in Japan.
“Nothing happens in Japan without them. ... Nothing like it anywhere else in the world,” former IOC marketing director Michael Payne said of Dentsu in an email to The Associated Press.
In the French probe, investigators are examining $2 million authorized by Japanese Olympic Committee President Tsunekazu Takeda and paid to the Singapore-based consulting company Black Tidings and its head Ian Tan Tong Han. Black Tidings is suspected of channeling the money to Papa Massata Diack, one of the sons of the former IOC member from Senegal, Lamine Diack.

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