TOKYO: Japanese prosecutors and antitrust officials raided major advertising agency Hakuhodo Inc. and other firms on Monday for their possible involvement in suspected bid-rigging for contracts related to test events for last year’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

Investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s special squad and the Fair Trade Commission jointly searched locations related to Hakuhodo, another ad agency Tokyu Agency Inc. and event companies Same Two Inc. and Fuji Creative Corp. on suspicion of violating the antimonopoly law. All four firms are based in Tokyo.

The prosecutors office and the FTC suspect that the companies prearranged winners in bidding for planning and planning assistance services for the test events, ordered by the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics organizing committee in May-August 2018. The authorities last week raided leading ad agency Dentsu Inc. and event company Cerespo Co. over the alleged bid-rigging, which they suspect was led by Dentsu.

During the period, bidding took place for 26 such orders, which were won by nine companies including Dentsu and a business consortium for a total of over 500 million yen.

Hakuhodo and Same Two each won orders for two test event venues, and Tokyu Agency three venues. Fuji Creative won orders for two venues itself and one venue through a consortium with Cerespo.

Dentsu and others were later awarded without bidding orders worth a total of some 20 billion yen for running the test events and for making preparations for and running actual Tokyo Games events, as well as orders worth some 8.5 billion yen for assisting the compilation of COVID-19 measures and implementing the countermeasures.

The prosecutors suspect that employees of companies including Dentsu who were dispatched to the organizing committee’s department in charge of the operations of the Games were also involved in the bid-rigging.

JIJI Press