A Japanese court has ordered advertising giant Dentsu Group to pay 300 million yen, or about 1.9 million dollars, as a fine for rigging bids for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

The advertising firm and its former executive Henmi Koji were indicted in 2023 on charges of violating the anti-monopoly law by pre-arranging bid winners to plan and stage the Games' test events.

The winners signed discretionary contracts to run actual competitions in the Games. The projects including both tests and actual games were worth about 43.7 billion yen, or about 283 million dollars in total.

The defendants pleaded not guilty, arguing that there was no bid-rigging over most operations of the actual Games.

At the Tokyo District Court on Thursday, presiding judge Yasunaga Kenji ruled that there was collusion between senior members of the Games' organizing committee and corporate executives. He said that their agreement on test events included operations of actual events.

The judge said that Dentsu Group is to blame for undermining fair competition as the firm is the largest in Japan's advertising industry and could influence other businesses.

The judge said that the defendants rigged bids for the benefit of the company. He fined the company and sentenced the former executive to 2 years in prison suspended for four years. Both appealed the ruling immediately.

Dentsu Group says that the company intends to seek a correction to the district court ruling by contending the legitimacy of its actions in appeal court hearings.