The Japanese Olympic Committee will form a commission to investigate allegations of corruption in the awarding of the 2020 Summer Games, the president of the organization said on Wednesday.
Tsunekazu Takeda, the committee’s leader, told Parliament in Tokyo that the commission would include outside lawyers and would “investigate the presence or absence of illegality” in payments made to a Singapore company called Black Tidings.
Tokyo overcame rival bids in 2013 from Madrid and Istanbul to win the Summer Games for the first time since 1964. Japanese officials have cast the Olympics as an opportunity to show the world that the country has recovered from the devastating March 2011 earthquake and subsequent nuclear disaster at Fukushima.