Senior officials at a major publishing company embroiled in a bribery scandal involving the Tokyo 2020 Olympics failed to use the firm's whistleblowing system because they feared reprisal or apathy, or were unaware the recourse existed.
According to a third-party committee's report, the officials at Kadokawa Corp. were aware that giving money to a former executive of the Olympic organizing committee constituted bribery and felt uncomfortable with the prospect.
The report details why the publisher’s officials still couldn’t stop the offense and even didn’t use the company’s whistleblowing system, despite the legal protection afforded to those who use such a mechanism from receiving unfair treatment on the basis of their reporting.
A third-party committee set up by Kadokawa published the report on the scandal earlier this year.
Senior officials of Kadokawa, including its former chairman Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, have been indicted on suspicion of bribing Haruyuki Takahashi, a former executive of the organizing committee for the Tokyo 2020 Games.
They are accused of paying him a total of around 70 million yen ($480,000) to get the publisher selected as an Olympic sponsor.
According to the report, before Kadokawa paid Takahashi, the publisher’s intellectual property legal department informed the company’s senior officials, including the head of the section responsible for Olympic-related matters, that the payment could constitute a bribery offense.
Other senior officials at the...
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