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For decades Lamine Diack was at the top of international athletics. On Wednesday, a Paris judge put a spectacular end to the controversial race.
Lamine Diack on the way to the Paris courtroom to receive the verdict. Charles Platiau, Reuters
Diack was sentenced to four years in prison, two of them unconditionally, for various corruption cases. You must also pay a fine of 5 million crowns.
The 87-year-old man came to the courtroom wearing a long white coat and a light blue face mask. There he received a landslide verdict for the way he ran the International Athletics Federation (IAAF) for 16 years.
The Senegalese was president from 1999 to 2015. Now the French court has ruled how he used his power to enrich himself.
Diack had the responsibility to lead the fight against cheating and doping. The verdict shows how the former president used his power to make a fortune from the numerous cheating in Russian sports.
He had to clean up and make sure they caught as many cheaters as possible. Diack decided to pressure doped athletes for money.
Lamine Diack greeted the Norwegian royal couple during the Bislett Games in 2005. Ørn E. Borgen
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Assignment Complete protection
In the courtroom, Judge Rose-Marie Hunault explained the details of Complete protection. That’s the name Diack’s corruption program got. Through this, he is said to have directly or indirectly pressured Russian athletes for NOK 34 million.
In return, he gave them full protection. This meant that practitioners with positive doping tests escaped exclusion or other sanctions. For that, they must have paid between 1 and 6 million crowns each.
Diack is said to have approved allowing doped athletes to participate in the 2012 London Olympics. The Russians swept and won 24 gold. In hindsight, five of them have been stripped for doping convictions, plus ten silver and bronze medals.
The following year was the World Athletics Championships in Moscow. Here, too, Russian practitioners, who Diack and the IAAF knew were doped, were allowed to participate. The championship was the first of Vladimir Putin’s three major competitions on Russian soil that decade (in addition to the Winter Olympics and the World Cup). Through them he told the story of a new and powerful Russia.
Diack, Vladimir Putin and former IOC President Jaques Rogge. RIA / REUTERS NEWS
I could have avoided the scandal
The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were later affected by a widespread doping scandal. Perhaps what many call the fraud of the time in international sport could have been avoided?
At least Lamine Diack had a chance to sound the alarm when he realized the numerous Russian cheating in the years leading up to the London Olympics.
Instead, Diack met Vitaly Mutko in 2011. The latter has long been one of Putin’s most trusted men. At that time, he was a sports minister in the Russian government. It was at that meeting that Diack launched the Total Protection plan.
Diack was also a member of the International Olympic Committee at the time.
The verdict also establishes that Diack arranged for the Russian authorities to finance the electoral campaign of one of Diack’s friends in the presidential elections in Senegal. This is said to have cost the Russians 15 million crowns.
In return, Diack made sure the IAAF was in no rush to follow up on Russian doping cases.
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Like father Like Son
Diack also played a role when Gabriel Dollé received almost 2 million crowns. At that time he was head of anti-doping work in international athletics. Before the police, he has admitted what he calls “the mistake of his life.” For that mistake, he was now sentenced to two years in prison.
It was Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, who paid Dollé to keep quiet about the doping deception. Diack jr. has been sentenced to five years in prison. He worked as the IAAF’s director of marketing under the leadership of his father.
The judge ruled that NOK 135 million was transferred to their companies. These came, among other things, from the sale of TV and sponsorship rights.
However, he has refused to leave Senegal. The country of origin will not extradite you either.
Two Russians were also sentenced to prison in the case. Nor have they left safe conditions in their home country to appear in court.
Valentin Balakhinichev is the former president of the Russian Athletics Federation, while Alexei Melnikov was the coach of the national team.
They are now convicted of conspiring to extort money from Russian practitioners.
New rounds at court?
Although Diack has been sentenced to prison, it is not certain that he has completely ended the French courts.
He appealed the verdict on the spot, despite the fact that Judge Rose-Marie Hunault said he could be released from prison due to his advanced age.
However, he is also accused of taking bribes prior to the award of the Olympics to both Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
The toy case in Japan can be brought to a French court in the fall.
Last summer, former Rio governor Sergio Cabral testified in a Brazilian corruption case. There he said that Diack received around 15 million crowns from the local organizing committee to secure five or six votes from the African IOC.
Cabral himself is serving a 200-year sentence for corruption, and Diack has denied the allegations. French police are also investigating suspicions that Diack received bribes when Qatar hosted the 2019 World Athletics Championships.
