IAAF cancels Monaco awards gala amid corruption claims against former

Thompson, the former Olympic decathlon champion, said the allegations struck at the very heart of the sport and likened it to both the FIFA corruption scandal and the drugs case surrounding disgraced seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. Dolle and Cisse face only the corruption charge.

The French investigation followed a complaint by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which has scheduled a news conference for Monday to address certain findings of its own investigation.

An independent commission, chaired by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s founding president Dick Pound, was formed after the broadcast of an ARD documentary – “Top-secret doping: How Russian Federation makes its winners” – which was aired in December 2014.

The investigations are the result of information passed on by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Independent Commission, WADA said. He was formally placed under police investigation alongside Habib Cisse, the former IAAF legal adviser.

The French prosecutors’ office said three investigating magistrates are handling the Diack probe.

Coe, who was a vice-president to Diack, volunteered to talk to police when they visited the body’s Monaco offices on Tuesday.

After the IAAF changed its rules to allow the ethics committee to break its silence, it confirmed that an investigation by the recently retired Lord Justice Sir Anthony Hooper, which is understood to have begun in spring 2014 before the German claims were broadcast, had been completed.

The IAAF Ethics Commission statement comes after news this week that Lamine Diack is under investigation by French prosecutors.

Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, stepped down from his role as an IAAF marketing consultant past year during an investigation into allegations of doping in Russian Federation. So, too, was Gabriel Dolle, a doctor who managed the IAAF anti-doping program.

“We have already said that there were problems with our federation, but the old management are no longer working there”, he said.

Reuters has not been able to reach Diack’s lawyer for comment.

An IOC spokesman said: “The worldwide Olympic Committee is standing for clean sports and good governance”.

“Given the cloud that hangs over our association this is clearly not the time for the global athletics family to be gathering in celebration of our sport”, IAAF president Sebastian Coe said in a bluntly-worded statement that also promised tougher financial controls. “Of course, not for free”, the source said. “But they did not come here to question Seb Coe”.