by Shigemi Sato
TOKYO - Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, disgraced in a corporate scandal at home, may also fall from the pantheon of the Olympics which he helped promote and famously used for his own good.
The man who helped bring the 1998 Winter Games to Nagano, where he owns skiing resorts, quit as honorary head of the national Olympic committee and owner of a top professional baseball club when the scandal surfaced last year.
His arrest last week, on charges of deceiving shareholders with false statements and insider trading involving his rail and resort empire, put paid to his influence abroad as well.
If convicted, the 70-year-old could lose his title as one of the four "honour" members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), apart from a maximum seven-and-a-half years in prison.
The IOC ethics commission is reportedly due to investigate Tsutsumi's case.
Last August, the IOC expelled former Indonesian industry and trade minister Bob Hassan as a member after he was found guilty in Indonesia of embezzlement and jailed for six years.
Tsutsumi and three others including former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger were given the special title in 2000 by Juan Antonio Samaranch when he stepped down as IOC president.
There are also 20 former IOC stalwarts who remain as "honorary" members in the self-anointed organisation which owns the biggest sports festival on earth, apart from the football World Cup.
"It is unfortunate because he has contributed to the development of Japan's sports circles," Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) president Tsunekazu Takeda said of Tsutsumi's arrest. But he added: "It has no impact on current JOC activities."
By heading the nation's ice hockey and skiing federations, Tsutsumi also has helped create the Asian Hockey League and let Japan host alpine skiing World Cup events.
Tsutsumi's name is inscribed in golden letters next to Samaranch's on the wall of the 11-year-old Olympic Museum outside the IOC headquarters in Lausanne as a major donor.
He helped organised Japanese corporate donations, estimated at no less than 10 million dollars, for the pet project of the aging former Spanish banker and diplomat.
Samaranch's 21-year tenure was marred by corruption as several IOC members were found to have taken bribes in exchange for a vote to choose Salt Lake City as the 2002 Winter Olympic venue. The IOC probe led to the resignation of four members and the expulsion of six others.
Tsutsumi's contribution to the 100-million-dollar museum was widely believed to have secured Samaranch's help for Japan in lobbying for the 1998 Winter Games with lavish spending, which allegedly inspired Salt Lake City to go wrong.
The Nagano bidding committee said it has lost books on its bidding expenditure.
Tsutsumi, the illegitimate son of legendary pre-World War II land developer Yasujiro Tsutsumi, was in 1990 dubbed the richest man in the world by the US business magazine Forbes.
The same magazine labelled him as the "biggest single beneficiary" of the Nagano Olympics, in its edition ahead of the 1998 Games.
"Winning the Olympics was a way for Tsutsumi to leverage big money out of the Japanese taxpayer for projects that benefit his group," it had said.
Japan spent an estimated 15 billion dollars on the Nagano Games and related projects with 6.5 billion dollars going into the bullet train link and 6.9 billion dollars to highways and roads.
The super-fast train linking the Nagano region with Tokyo, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the southwest, stops at the doorstep of an upmarket resort where Tsutsumi has a golf and hotel complex as well as a ski and snowboard ground with artificial snow.
Some of the Olympic roads lead to the Shiga Kogen heights where he has another business.
But he publicly denied the allegation then as he told a news conference: "To put it clearly, my company has nothing to do with the Olympics."
"We have rather suffered a loss due to the Olympics," he said without elaboration.
A spokesman for Tsutsumi's business group Kokudo explained that they provided material and volunteers and promoted community services for the Games. "The media totally ignore these aspects and suggest that one company or one person is reaping profit."

03/09/2005 03:41 GMT