Lamine Diack, the former head of world athletics, has been sentenced to four years in prison, two of them suspended, by a French court for his part in a corruption scandal.
A statement from the French ministry of justice confirmed the sentence for the 87-year-old from Senegal, who had been charged with directly or indirectly soliciting 3.45 million euros (£3.15m) in bribes from athletes, many of them Russian, to cover up positive drug tests.
It was reported that presiding judge Rose-Marie Hunault told Diack that due to his age it was not expected he would serve a custodial sentence, but instead be granted conditional release.
In addition to the prison sentence, Diack was fined 500,000 euros (over £450,000). He served as the head of athletics’ global federation, known at the time as the IAAF, between 1999 and 2015.
Diack senior had been under house arrest in France since November 2015.
Allegations of a conspiracy to cover up positive drugs tests in Russia first came to light when Yuliya Stepanova and her husband spoke out in March 2013.
Eleven months later Andrei Baranov, the agent of Russian marathon runner Lilya Shobukhova, told the race director of world athletics’ governing body, then known as the IAAF, she had been asked to pay 450,000 euros over a two-year period to stay off a doping watch list in order to compete at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Diack stood down as IAAF president in August 2015, with Lord Coe succeeding him in the top job.
In January 2016 the World Anti-Doping Agency found Diack “organised and enabled” the Russian doping scandal within the IAAF. The IAAF issued life bans from the sport to his son Papa Massata Diack, the former president of the Russian athletics federation Valentin Balakhnichev and the former head of its long-distance running programme Alexei Melnikov.
Diack Jr was sentenced to five years in prison but remains in Senegal, with the authorities in the West African country having refused to extradite him to France. Former IAAF lawyer Habib Cisse received a three-year sentence with a further two years suspended while the organisation’s former anti-doping chief Gabriel Dolle was handed a two-year suspended sentence.
Balakhnichev and Melnikov were sentenced in their absence to three and two years respectively. Both remain the subject of international arrest warrants.
A press statement from the ministry concluded: “This conviction is the first rendered by the French courts for acts of corruption committed within an international sports governing body.
“The judgement rendered by the 32nd chamber of the Criminal Court is not yet final, however, as the convicted persons have the power to exercise legal remedies against them.”
World Athletics – the IAAF’s current guise – welcomed the ruling, which was accompanied by sizeable damages.
A statement said: “This has been a long five years and we would like to thank the French Prosecutors and the Paris Criminal Court for their time, detailed work and deliberations in to this case.
“Whilst we are disappointed this happened in our sport, we are grateful for the strong and clear decisions that have been taken against the individuals involved and charged with these crimes, and we would like to reassure everyone that the reforms our congress approved in 2016 will ensure that similar actions by individuals can never happen again in our sport.
“We are grateful for the damages awarded by the Paris Criminal Court totalling €16 million for embezzled funds and for reputational damage suffered as a direct consequence of these crimes and the resulting media coverage. As the court acknowledged, this damage has impacted World Athletics’ finances and had a negative impact on World Athletics’ image and reputation in a deep and lasting way.
“We will do everything we can to recover the monies awarded, and return them to the organisation for the development of athletics globally.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency described the court’s decision as “a victory for clean sport”.
WADA president Witold Banka said: “This is a victory for athletes and for clean sport. It shows that no one is above the law.
“It is particularly encouraging when sports-related corruption is being taken seriously by criminal justice systems around the world, and the French authorities are to be congratulated for their diligence and commitment.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here