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Lamine Diack justifies delaying sanction of doped Russian athletes

2020-06-11T14:51:16.921Z


The former boss of world athletics, Lamine Diack, admitted in court Thursday to have slowed the processing of doping cases of Russian athletes in 2011-2013 so as not to compromise the signing of a sponsorship contract with a bank Russian.


With Reuters

On the third day of his corruption trial, the 87-year-old former Franco-Senegalese athlete was very elusive over the millions of euros that the National Financial Prosecutor's Office accuses him of having received in return for this which was presented by the president of the court as a “total protection” system for doped athletes. 

Lamine Diack is suspected of having benefited from cash rebates from Russian athletes and sports leaders for an amount estimated at 3.45 million euros, an accusation he contests. He is also accused of having received up to 1.5 million euros from the Russian authorities to finance electoral campaigns in Senegal, including the 2012 presidential election won by Macky Sall, the candidate he supported.

Lamine Diack's son Papa Massata, a former IAAF marketing consultant, has emerged as a centerpiece of the suspect money movements since the start of the trial, of which he is one of the big ones missing. Also prosecuted for corruption, he is a refugee in Senegal, who refused to extradite him despite an international arrest warrant.

In his absence, it was his father who justified the slowing down of procedures targeting Russian athletes whose biological passport showed abnormalities demonstrating blood doping, which allowed some of them to participate in the London Olympics, in 2012, and at the World Championships in Athletics in Moscow, in 2013, before being subsequently downgraded and deprived of their medals. 

Dressed in an immaculate white boubou, Lamine Diack explained to the court that he had not sought to protect these athletes, but wanted to prevent all the cases from breaking out at the same time, which would have caused a resounding "scandal" and compromised the renewal of a sponsorship contract of 30 million dollars over five years with the Russian public bank VTB.

VTB finally signed in February 2013 a new contract of 32 million dollars over five years, on which Papa Massata Diack is suspected of having pocketed thereafter 10 million dollars thanks to a chain of assignments of rights to the heart from which we find his company, Pamodzi Sports Consulting, and the Japanese advertising agency Dentsu.

The World Athletics Championships took place a few months later in the Russian capital, under the eyes of Vladimir Putin, who had just become president again and whose boss of the Russian Athletics Federation, Valentin Balakhnitchev, another accused absent and central part of the file , was a loved one. “Moscow was to be a success. It had to work, "summed up Lamine Diack, claiming that he had learned only in the course of 2014 that several hundred thousand euros had been extorted on this occasion from Russian athletes suspected of doping in exchange, they thought, for their protection. .

Read also

  • Doping and corruption: the hour of the accounts has struck for Lamine Diack and her son

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-06-11

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