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He embodied the bad in sport: on the death of athletics official Lamine Diack

2021-12-03T10:43:06.386Z


Scandals paved his way: Lamine Diack led the World Athletics Federation and his family estate for 16 years. When he was held accountable for this at the end of his life, he no longer understood the world.


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Lamine Diack died at the age of 88

Photo:

Wu Hong / dpa

Writing an obituary on Lamine Diack creates two problems.

The first problem: the old principle of not saying anything bad about the dead has been doomed to failure from the start with the long-time president of the World Athletics Federation.

The second problem: With all the scandals associated with his name, you hardly know where to start.

When he stood before a court in France at the beginning of 2020, which finally sentenced him to a four-year prison sentence for money laundering, corruption and gang-style crime, SPIEGEL read the following sentence: “Diack stands for a lot, maybe for everything in sport went wrong in the past decades. "

This rate is still valid, even today, on which his death at the age of 88 is reported.

Business dealt with through his son

If you want to find something good in Diack's work at the top of world athletics, you can at least say: He took care of his family.

All the dark business and side business that Diack did in his 16 years as athletics boss was handled for him by his son Papa Massata.

To whom the father had given a role as a well-paid PR consultant in the association.

The quote from the influential judo official Marius Vizer, also a gifted set-shifter in world sport, who drew the pretty comparison: »I sacrifice my family for sport.

Diack is a person who sacrifices sport for his family. "

The bribes were usually paid into the son's account.

For example, when Diack cashed in for years for quietly tolerating nationwide Russian doping and not doing anything about it.

In close cooperation with the athletics officials Valentin Balachnitschew and Aleksej Melnikow, both also indicted and convicted in Paris, he swept the doping knowledge under the table and let his silence pay dearly.

Made a career early on

The political cabal, backroom politics, nepotism - that was what the man from Senegal learned early on.

Already at home he gradually climbed the career ladder, up to the state secretary for youth and sport, in between he was also mayor of the capital Dakar, president of the African athletics and the Senegalese football association.

Lamine Diack never had a problem with the accumulation of offices.

On the contrary: it was part of his self-image.

The more pots he could stir, the more profit there was, the closer the networks became.

And the bags of the Diack family, they filled up.

For championship he made all these qualities then at the top of world athletics.

As a deputy, he had already been able to look over the shoulder of his predecessor Primo de Nebiolo for eight years.

The Italian was also someone who was more of a godfather than a president.

An excellent puller, an authoritarian association boss, someone who loved, enjoyed, and exploited power.

The smell of corruption had already spread in the rooms of the management of the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Learned a lot from the predecessor

When Diack succeeded de Nebiolos in 1999, he outstripped his teacher and predecessor many times over.

In the run-up to the award of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, he is said to have happily received bribes, which was determined against him in the Paris trial.

Arbitrarily peaceful: $ 1.5 million from Brazil, $ 1.5 million from Tokyo, the investigators found out.

He is also said to have turned the fact that Qatar hosted the 2019 World Athletics Championships.

Of course, not entirely without financial self-interest.

That goes without saying.

He was allowed to do his job for 16 years, and everyone in the leadership of the IAAF knew how Diack understood his duties. It wasn't until 2015 that something happened. But not because the sport was active, but the tax investigation: The chairman, who was already aged at the time, was placed under house arrest in Paris, he himself did not understand it at all, instead spoke of a conspiracy against him. In court he only admitted small chunks of the allegations against him; the old man appeared as someone who did not even begin to understand what he was being accused of at all. Like Stasi chief Erich Mielke after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the end, Diack no longer had to serve his sentence; in May he was allowed to leave France on bail and returned to Senegal.

To the country whose president he would have loved to become, as he once said.

Senegal was spared that.

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2021-12-03

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