IAAF Corruption was ‘Embedded in the Organisation’: Wada Report

In the second part of the WADA Independent Commission report into widespread doping and corruption in the sport, Diack, president of the IAAF for 16 years from 1999-2015, is said to have created an “inner circle” which functioned as an “illegitimate governance structure outside the formal IAAF governance structure” and enabled the continual subversion of normal anti-doping procedures.

Mr. Pound said given the concentration of power at the IAAF, the infrequency of meetings and the limited information council members received from the president, Mr. Coe’s claims that he didn’t know of the corruption were credible.

At a press conference on Thursday, Pound endorsed Diack’s successor, Sebastian Coe, and urged the IAAF to “seize this opportunity and under strong leadership move forward”. “So all out fingers are crossed in that respect”. “Our American colleagues and others are nearly accusing the president of doping, taking the issue to absurdity”, he said, news agency R-Sport reported.

He said: “The moment I became president in August, the IAAF were being criticised for all sorts of things”.

Well before the antidoping commission’s investigation, the IAAF knew the extent of Russia’s drug abuse, said Dick Pound, an author of the report.

The French arrest warrant for Papa Massata Diack – which has been transmitted as an global wanted alert via Interpol – means he could be arrested if he travels outside his home country of Senegal, especially to European Union countries with which France’s legal authorities work closely.

The IAAF released a statement after the press conference saying it “fully acknowledges and accepts the extreme gravity of the commission’s findings”.

The WADA commission also investigated a leaked database of athlete blood tests, which the Sunday Times had alleged contained suspicious results that the IAAF did not properly investigate.

Marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe also said she was confident Coe could get athletics back on track after the latest corruption revelations.

“We can’t just sit here and say we deserve trust”, Coe said.

The Wada report also says that Nick Davies, Coe’s right-hand man who is the subject of an ethics investigation, was “well aware of Russian “skeletons” in the cupboard”.

“Transcripts of the various discussions between Turkish individuals with KD (Khalil Diack) make reference to a discussion regarding the Olympic city bidding process for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games”, the footnote says.

Lamine Diack, the organization’s longtime president until last August, solicited illegal payments in exchange for such delayed processing of paperwork, the report said, and in at least one instance planned to strike a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the doping violations of nine Russian athletes.

The report laid considerable blame at the feet of the IAAF Council, which included the now president, Sebastian Coe.

While the first part of the report, released in November, focused mainly on wrongdoing by the Russian athletics federation (ARAF) and the Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA), Thursday’s report centers on the corruption of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which was found to have contributed to the corruption that allowed athletes with dirty blood tests to continue competing. It involved the director of the medical and anti-doping department of the IAAF.