Dead Diack, former head of the IAAF. It helped mask Russian doping

Former president of the international athletics federation, Lamine Diack, died last night at the age of 88. Born in Dakar on 7 June 1933, Diack had returned to Senegal last May, after the lifting of the ban on leaving the French territory following the sentence in September 2020 to four years of imprisonment (two of which are granted) for acts of corruption . Boss of world athletics between 1999 and 2015 and influential member of the IOC, Diack was indicted for the first time in 2015 for alleged corruption related to doping in Russia. At the trial in Paris it was discovered that the money received by Diack had been paid to him in exchange for “full protection”, to allow Russian athletes who should have been disqualified to escape punishment. In doing so, about 23 Russians managed to avoid doping stops so that they could compete in the 2012 London Olympics and the 2013 World Championships in Moscow.

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Diack had appealed the sentence handed down last year and a date for a retrial had yet to be set. The Senegalese was also to be tried for a second case, after his indictment in March 2019 for corruption, this time in the context of the 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games as well as in the 2015 World Athletics Championships (Beijing), 2017 (London) and 2019 (Qatar). Due to his age, Diack, a former long jumper, football manager and then businessman and politician who was decorated in the Kremlin in late 2011, was spared prison. His son Papa Massata Diack, a former marketing executive at IAAF (now World Athletics), was tried in absentia because Senegal refused to extradite him and sentenced to five years in prison, as well as being fined one million euros and banned. from any sport for 10 years.

bail

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The Senegalese team of the local top flight, the Jaraaf de Dakar, of which Diack was president, said they were forced to sell part of the property of the headquarters to pay the bail. Diack was replaced by Britain’s Sebastian Coe in August 2015 as the head of world athletics. The disgraced Senegalese resigned from the IOC in the same year. Coe had been one of Diack’s vice presidents at the then Iaaf between 2011 and 2014.