Former global athletics boss Lamine Diack faces judgement day

Paris, France: The verdicts in the corruption trial of former global athletics chief Lamine Diack, his son and four others will be handed down in a Paris court on Wednesday.

The older Diack, an 87-year-old Senegalese, who was in charge of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), now renamed World Athletics, between 1999 and 2015, is charged with “giving and receiving bribes”, “breach of trust” and “organised money laundering”.

The prosecution alleged that Diack obtained $1.5 million of Russian funds in exchange for the IAAF’s anti-doping arm covering up or delaying offences by 23 Russians to allow them to compete in the 2012 London Olympics and the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow.

Prosecutors have called for Diack to serve four years in prison and be fined up to 500,000 euros ($560,000).

Diack told the court it was his decision to delay bans after the athletes failed tests in 2011, but he denied knowing that officials from the body had directly or indirectly asked those athletes for hundreds of thousands of euros to hush up their cases. 

He said he was acting to safeguard “the financial health of the IAAF” because the federation was negotiating major sponsorship contracts with Russian bank VTB and a Russian broadcaster at the time.

Diack, who was decorated in the Kremlin in late 2011, denied taking Russian funds to finance the successful campaign by Macky Sall for the Senegal presidency.

His son Papa Massata Diack, who worked as a marketing consultant to the IAAF, remains in Senegal, which refuses to extradite him. He has been tried in absentia on charges including corruption and money laundering.

In a press conference in Senegal’s capital Dakar on Monday, Papa Massata, who is 55, declared himself “innocent” and argued that the French court had no jurisdiction.

He said he was not a French resident and that his companies are registered in his native Senegal.

Senegalese authorities are conducting their own investigation and he is facing similar charges to the ones filed in France. 

Papa Massata accused British authorities of being behind the charges — which he termed “the biggest lie in the history of world sport” — in a bid to secure the IAAF presidency.

Sebastian Coe, who took over from Lamine Diack, is British and a double Olympic gold medallist at 1,500 metres.