Yoshiaki Tsutsumi

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Shinjuku Prince Hotel and Seibu-Shinjuku Railway Station . The railway line and hotel chain belong to the Seibu Group.

Yoshiaki Tsutsumi ( Japanese 堤 義 明 , Tsutsumi Yoshiaki ; born May 29, 1934 ) is a Japanese entrepreneur . For a long time he was the main owner and chairman of the Seibu Group , which includes hotels (Prince Hotels), amusement parks and the Seibu Lions baseball team, as well as the railway company of the same name , which operates several lines in northwest Tokyo .

Forbes placement

Yoshiaki Tsutsumi inherited the Seibu Group from his father, Yasujiro Tsutsumi , who built the company. His older half-brother Seiji Tsutsumi inherited only the department store chain ( Depāto ) KK Seibu Hyakkaten (Eng. Seibu Department Store, Ltd. ).

Until 1990, Tsutsumi topped Forbes' list of the richest people in the world for three years, and then fell behind. In 2007 he was no longer on the list.

The Olympic dream

Tsutsumi used his economic and political influence to support Nagano's (successful) bid for the 1998 Winter Olympics . Among other things, he donated $ 20 million for the construction of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne , a project by the then IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch . Not least because of this, allegations of corruption were raised against the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the award of the Games.

In addition, it was criticized that Tsutsumi, as an entrepreneur in the hotel and leisure industry with real estate ownership in the region, was not only the largest sponsor, but also the greatest beneficiary of the Olympic Games in Nagano. In connection with the infrastructure measures during the preparations, the Nagano Shinkansen , the high-speed train between Takasaki and Nagano, was inaugurated in 1997 , which connects the region together with the Jōetsu Shinkansen to the metropolis of Tokyo.

Tsutsumi was chairman of the Japanese Olympic Committee between 1989 and March 1990 and honorary president from 1997 until his resignation in 2004. He was also an honorary member of the IOC. In April 2005, Tsutsumi's membership of the IOC was suspended on the recommendation of the ethics committee.

Resignation and process

On October 13, 2004, Tsutsumi resigned from all positions in the Seibu Group after allegations of defrauding potential investors. The authorities opened investigations. On March 3, 2005, Tsutsumi was arrested for misrepresenting the distribution of the shares in the Seibu Railway Company in Tokyo. He was sentenced to 30 months probation and a fine of five million yen on October 27, 2005.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry on Forbes.com for 2006 (English)
  2. ^ Deutsche Welle, March 9, 2007: Rich always richer
  3. ↑ Tsutsumi is on the Olympic Museum's list of donors .
  4. ↑ Time Magazine, January 25, 1999: How The Olympics Were Bought (English)
  5. ↑ Tsutsumi steps down from JOC. In: The Japan Times Online. October 28, 2004, accessed January 24, 2011 .
  6. ↑ Decision with recommendation N ° D / 02/05. (PDF, 34 kB) International Olympic Committee Ethics Commission, May 8, 2006, accessed May 10, 2015 .
  7. ↑ [Kyodo News, October 13, 2004] (English)
  8. ↑ BBC News article on the arrest (English)
  9. ↑ Spiegel online article about the judgment

literature

personal data
SURNAME Tsutsumi, Yoshiaki
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 堤 義 明 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1934