WADA: Diack laid the foundations for corruption scandals

Coe was present in the room in Munich as the World Anti-doping Agency’s independent commission’s chairman Dick Pound said it was too easy just to blame the failures on his predecessor Lamine Diack, who along with his son Papa Massata Diack and other officials is under investigation by French police for taking money to cover up doping by athletes.

Russian Federation has been entangled in a series of scandals after WADA published a report in November alleging state-sponsored doping and mass corruption in the country’s athletics.

WADA claims former IAAF president Lamine Diack and other members of the IAAF council conspired to cover up the doping and blackmail of Russian athletes – actions to which the culture of corruption among IAAF leaders can be attributed.

The IAAF has been under fire as of late after recent reports have come out speculating that the organization had known about Russia’s doping activities and did nothing to stop it.

It found that former IAAF president Lamine Diack “was responsible for organising and enabling the conspiracy and corruption” that took place at IAAF. Earlier this month, an independent ethics commission of the IAAF issued lifetime bans to four track executives and a five-year ban to former IAAF antidoping chief, Gabriel Dollé, whose conduct was extensively chronicled in Thursday’s report.

The report described negotiations over the fate of a group of Russian athletes accused of doping in the run up to IAAF championships held in Moscow in 2013. “And, as they say, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want”.

Pound said it was still possible that Russian Federation could be readmitted before Rio: “Whether the progress to date and foreseeable future is up to that remains in the hands of Russian Federation and judgement of overseeing authorities”. The BBC uncovered emails that show Coe, who was then vice president of the IAAF, expressed support of Eugene’s bid to Diack.

Pound’s report added to a rapidly growing scandal involving organised doping and its concealment that has rocked world athletics and drawn comparison with a corruption and governance scandal at football’s governing body FIFA.

The report says the unspecified “problem” was valued at $6 million and says the TV rights award process may be linked to doping cover-ups.

“The IAAF Council could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics and the non-enforcement of applicable anti-doping rules”.

Coe, who took over the presidency in August, had praised Diack in the past, before the charges against him emerged. Pound agreed with Radcliffe’s assertion, stating that the leaked database “could not have been used to prosecute athletes for doping violations prior to the implementation of the athlete biological passport in 2009”. “The weakness of IAAF’s governance which has been exposed allowed individuals at the head of the previous regime at the IAAF to delay the following of normal procedures in certain doping cases”.

He appeared to have created a close inner circle which functioned as “an informal illegitimate governance structure” outside the IAAF, a circle which included his sons Papa Massata Diack and Khalil Diack, who were contracted as consultants.

The All-Russia Athletic Federation, the governing body for Russian track and field, did not respond to an emailed request for comment.