Doping and corruption: the hour has come for Lamine Diack and her son

The case, which broke out in November 2015 with the arrest of the Senegalese in the Paris region, has generated other sulphurous files which have tarnished the image of sport: since 2016, Russia has been punished for large-scale institutional doping and French justice is now also seized of suspicions of corruption in the attribution of the Olympic Games of Rio-2016 and Tokyo-2020. 

Forbidden to leave France, the former boss of the International Athletics Federation (IAAF, 1999-2015), whom the national financial prosecution accuses of having set up "a real criminal organization", risks up to ten years of prison for active and passive corruption, breach of trust and money laundering in an organized gang. One of his former French advisers, lawyer Habib Cissé, and the former head of the IAAF anti-doping service, Gabriel Dollé, appear for passive bribery.

Key player in the case, Papa Massata Diack, Lamine's son and former powerful marketing advisor to the IAAF, who has always escaped French justice, will probably be absent. His lawyer in Paris, Me Antoine Beauquier, requests the postponement of the trial because his two other lawyers are blocked in Dakar by the closure of the borders. A request considered Monday morning, the first of six days of hearing, when the proceedings had already been postponed in January due to procedural problems. 

Organic passport

Before the 32nd Correctional Chamber, the former president of the Russian Athletics Federation, Valentin Balakhnitchev, and the former national long-distance running trainer, Alexei Melnikov, suspected of having withdrawn funds from doped athletes in exchange for their Protection against sanctions, for a total estimated at 3.45 million euros, should also be missed.

Political interference, doping and colossal sums poured by the sponsors and the TV rights, the business concentrates a lot of excesses of the sport. It started in the early 2010s, with the arrival in the anti-doping arsenal of the biological passport, which makes it possible to detect suspicious blood variations. The noose tightens then on Russia and in November 2011, a list of 23 suspect athletes is established.

At the same time, Lamine Diack, her son and Habib Cisse multiply trips to Moscow. The disciplinary files drag on, allowing several athletes to participate in the London 2012 Olympics. Some will even be sacred (Kirdyapkin 50 km walk, Zaripova 3,000 m steeplechase), before being destroyed. 

From Moscow to Dakar

Lamine Diack, 87, said the sanctions were staggered to avoid sinking the image of Russia and to promote negotiations on TV rights and sponsors for the 2013 Worlds in Moscow. "The suspension of Russian athletes had to be postponed to get the VTB contract," a Russian state bank, he said during the investigation. He also conceded that he had obtained 1.5 million euros from Russia to campaign against outgoing Abdoulaye Wade in the Senegalese presidential election in 2012.

But for his lawyers, the Russian athletes were finally punished (most in 2014) and Lamine Diack wanted to save the IAAF from bankruptcy. They refute any link between the diplomatic game of Moscow in Africa and sports records. The case might never have seen the light of day if the marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova, finally suspended in 2014, had not asked her blackmailers for a refund. A transfer of 300,000 euros to his profit, coming from an account in Singapore, made it possible to go back to Papa Massata Diack. The names of several other athletes and the sums appear on notes seized from Habib Cissé, but the trace of the money was not found. 

Lamine Diack will also be tried for allowing her son to appropriate several million euros in negotiations with sponsors, either by taxing his companies as intermediaries, or by awarding "exorbitant" commissions. The investigation did not evaluate an amount, but the international federation, civil party like the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), claims 24.6 million euros in damages from the defendants on this aspect, on a total loss which it estimates at 41 M EUR.

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