The president of the Paris 2024 organising committee (Cojop), Tony Estanguet, is under investigation by the French judiciary. Magistrates specialising in financial crimes opened an inquiry last week into how Tony Estanguet receives his salary as head of the organising committee, according to AFP.

Tony Estanguet, has an annual salary of €270,000 ($290,000) before tax and bonuses, which was made public in 2018 following controversy over reports that he would receive almost double that amount.

It is worth noting that while Estanguet's remuneration may seem high, it is lower than what Sebastian Coe (now head of World Athletics) received over a decade ago for his role as organiser of the London 2012 Games, where he was paid around £360,000 (€421,000), according to the organising committee's annual report. 

According to revelations by investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaine last October, Estanguet used his own company to bill the organising committee monthly instead of taking a salary.

A spokesman for the committee said it was "astonished" by the investigation and denied that Estanguet had been paid as an external consultant to circumvent salary limits imposed on charities. 

"The package and the arrangements were approved by the board and the economy ministry," the spokesman added in defence of the triple Olympic medallist, who now serves as the public face of Cojop. Meanwhile, the Paris financial crimes prosecutor's office declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Legal questions:

The Paris organising committee is already the subject of three separate investigations into the possible misuse of public funds and favouritism in the award of contracts, according to AFP. The offices of the committee and the games' infrastructure group, Solideo, have been raided by police, as have the homes of two other senior organising committee officials, Etienne Thobois and Edouard Donnelly. 

The cases revolve around sports management or event companies set up by people who would have been senior staff at the Games before they started working for the Paris 2024 Organising Committee. Around 20 different contracts worth tens of millions of euros are under investigation, a judicial source told AFP on condition of anonymity. 

France's anti-corruption agency had flagged potential anomalies with Estanguet's salary arrangement in a 2021 report, due to the organising committee's status as a charity.

The spokesman said his salary had been approved by the organisation's remuneration committee, made up of independent experts, and approved by the General Controller of Economy and Finance at the Ministry of Economy.

The investigation comes just over five months before the start of the third Summer Games in history, hosted by Paris amid efforts to present a different image to the world from the last Olympics, which were marred by corruption. 

The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro were marked by large-scale corruption that affected the general public and led to the conviction of the former head of the Olympic Games in Brazil and the city's governor. 

Although not as scandalous as Brazil, Tokyo 2020 has also had its share of problems, with individuals found guilty of bribing a member of the Tokyo Olympic Committee. 

For the time being, this is a judicial investigation and the "right to defence" and, above all, the "presumption of innocence" oblige everyone to be cautious and wait for the French justice system to do its job and come up with a concrete charge or, if it finds insufficient evidence, to acquit. 

Speedy justice will be a crucial factor in this story, for the sake of the Games and Estanguet himself.