Japanese prosecutors have questioned Japan’s Olympic chief and other officials over millions of dollars in payments made during Tokyo’s successful bid to host the 2020 Olympics, reports said yesterday.
 Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) president Tsunekazu Takeda, who also led the Tokyo bid, was among those quizzed in recent weeks at the request of French investigators, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
 French authorities said in May last year that they were investigating the 2.8mn Singapore dollar (1.8mn euros, $2mn) payments to a Singapore-based consultancy. Japanese officials have consistently denied wrongdoing and have said that the payments were for consulting services.
 The two payments, linked to a son of disgraced ex-world athletics chief Lamine Diack, were made either side of Tokyo winning the hosting rights at a vote in Buenos Aires in September 2013.
 “Having no recognition of the violation of laws nor bribery, I have told (prosecutors) the same explanation I’ve given (previously),” Takeda told the Yomiuri. Private broadcaster Nippon TV carried a similar story. A JOC investigation reported last September that it had found no evidence of bribery by Japanese officials in the case.
 Diack, whose son Papa Massata Diack has denied receiving the money, was an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member at the time of the Tokyo bid. The Tokyo prosecutors office declined to comment, while JOC officials and Tokyo 2020 organisers could not immediately confirm the reports.
 “The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee has no means of knowing the bid committee’s activities,” the organising committee said in an email to AFP.
 Allegations the payments were improper were first reported by Britain’s Guardian newspaper last May. Tokyo beat Istanbul and Madrid for the right to host the 2020 Games.
 Tokyo 2020 organisers have been grappling with a list of headaches including soaring costs and calls to change venues. The country club that will host the golf tournaments has come under fire for its policy of barring women from becoming full members, and a trade show group is calling on Tokyo to find a new location for the international media centre.
 Meanwhile, the chairman of the Japanese golf club set to host the sport at the 2020 Olympics said they are bewildered by requests to lift its ban on women becoming full members. Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama, north of Tokyo, postponed a decision to review its membership policy following a board meeting on Tuesday after the club came under fire from Tokyo’s female governor Yuriko Koike.
 The governor said she felt “uncomfortable that women cannot become full members in the 21st century”, while the International Olympic Committee also expressed concerns about the rule. Tokyo organisers have also filed a written request to the golf club to change the rule.
 A meeting to discuss requests to drop its ban on full female members ended with no firm decision.
 “It’s extremely annoying the situation has evolved into what it is so quickly,” board chairman Kiichi Kimura told local media. “There was no decision and we will discuss it further. We are baffled, that’s our situation right now. We agreed (to host the Olympic golf competitions) at their request, but we never made a bid (to host it).”
 The row comes after calls to move the 2020 Olympic tournament from the private club because of the rule, which allows women to play from Monday to Saturday but bars them from becoming full members and from playing on Sundays.
 Yukihiko Nunomura, Tokyo 2020’s chief operating officer, who was briefed about the meeting, later told reporters he expects that the club “will move
towards operating with gender equality in mind”.