The man who brought the Olympics to Rio is being questioned by Brazilian police as the investigation into allegations of massive corruption within the International Olympic Committee intensifies.

The equivalent of £155,000 in cash is said to have been seized after being found in a closet during a raid on Carlos Nuzman’s home as part of an investigation into claims the bidding process for Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 was rigged.

Nuzman, who was head of the Rio 2016 bid committee and is a well known figure in Olympic circles, was summoned to face questions about how he secured the right to host South America’s first ever Olympics amid suspicions he was a key figure in a bribery scandal. The headquarters of the Brazilian Olympic Committee, of which Nuzman is president, were also searched as part of the operation entitled “Unfair Play”.

Nuzman’s lawyer, Sergio Mazzillo, told reporters outside the house that his client would co-operate but was innocent of any wrongdoing. “I can confirm that [Nuzman] did not commit any irregularity,” Mazzillo said. “Unfortunately, this has created a media spectacle.”

Brazilian prosecutors have been working with their French counterparts since February. It is understood they suspect Nuzman facilitated a $2m payment made by a wealthy Brazilian businessman into the account of Papa Massata Diack, just two days before Rio won the right to stage the Games.

Massata Diack – who recently lost an appeal against a life ban from athletics over corruption allegations – is the son of the disgraced former IOC member Lamine Diack, who it is believed voted for Rio at an IOC session in Copenhagen in 2009 in exchange for the money.

The Guardian revealed last year French prosecutors investigating corruption in world athletics had expanded their remit to include the bidding and voting processes for the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Brazilian prosecutors were already investigating payments of $10m said to have been made by the businessman Arthur César de Menezes Soares Filho – known as King Arthur – to Sergio Cabral, a former governor of Rio de Janeiro.

The prosecutors suspect King Arthur and Cabral also arranged for a payment to reach Lamine Diack, former president of athletics’ world governing body, the IAAF, to guarantee his vote for Rio 2016, an event which would further the businessman’s own commercial interests.

Prosecutors suspect Nuzman, a former Olympic volleyball player and himself an IOC member since 2000, provided the bridge between King Arthur and Cabral to Diack. They are also believed to have found documents in Nuzman’s house pertaining to offshore banking accounts in Switzerland.

A statement from prosecutors in Rio said of Nuzman: “Without his presence and the negotiation he established, the ingenious and corrupt complex relationship could not have achieved the success it did.

“ Nuzman was the agent responsible for bringing together interested parties, making contacts and oiling relationships to organise the mechanisms for transferring Cabral’s bribes directly to African members of the International Olympic Committee, which was effectively done by way of Arthur Soares.”

Cabral, who was governor of Rio de Janeiro state for eight years until 2014, is currently jailed on accusations that he ran a criminal organisation and took over $100m in bribes, much of which was spent on high living and jewellery.

The Federal Public Ministry asked Brazilian courts to block $320m in assets for Nuzman, King Arthur – who is based in the United States – and his business partner Eliane Pereira Cavalcante. They are also investigating whether Nuzman secured Russian citizenship in exchange for his vote for Sochi 2014.

The IOC has frequently insisted it is fully reformed following measures taken after the Salt Lake City bribery scandal in 1999. However the Guardian revealed last year that Papa Massata Diack, who remains in Senegal with an Interpol arrest warrant in his name, had arranged for “parcels” to be delivered to six IOC members in 2008 at a time when Qatar was bidding for the 2016 Olympic Games, though it failed to make it beyond the shortlisting stage.

The Brazilian prosecutors have called for cooperation from the US authorities in securing the arrest of King Arthur.

“Vast documentation and robust evidence revealed that Cabral’s criminal organisation bought the vote of Lamine Diack for $2m,” they said in a statement. “In view of this Brazilian Federal Police, prosecutors and French financial prosecutors launched Operation Unfair Play, with the issue of arrest warrants for the businessman Arthur Soares, known as ‘King Arthur’ and his partner Eliane Pereira Cavalcante.

“By way of wiretaps and emails exchanged between the partners, prosecutors discovered that the businessman intended to move to Uruguay. As well as these arrests, the justice system authorised that the president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) Carlos Arthur Nuzman be taken in for questioning by federal police. As there are suspicions that the president of the COB has Russian nationality, he is prohibited from leaving the country and must hand over all the passports he possesses.

“In addition to the investigations carried out by Brazilian and French prosecutors, w e have the complete cycle of how the sale of the vote for the choice of the host city of the Olympic Games of 2016, whose winner was the city of Rio de Janeiro, happened.”

Nuzman, who was due to attend a police hearing on Tuesday evening, has yet to respond to the claims.

Additional reporting by Dom Phillips in Rio