SHAMED TRIO GIVEN LIFE BANS
The full scale of corruption involving senior IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) officials has been laid bare after three of athletics’ leading figures were handed lifetime bans for blackmail and covering up positive drugs tests. The trio were Papa Massata Diack, the son of the then IAAF president Lamine Diack and a marketing consultant for the organisation, former Russian athletics federation (ARAF) president and IAAF treasurer Valentin Balakhnichev, and Alexei Melnikov, a senior ARAF coach. Gabriel Dolle, who was the IAAF’s anti-doping director, has been given a five-year ban for his part in the doping scandal which has rocked world athletics. The findings by the IAAF’s ethics commission make disturbing reading with the trio found to have blackmailed Russian runner Liliya Shobukhova, London marathon winner in 2010, and made her pay a bribe for a positive drugs test to be covered up. Lamine Diack, who was succeeded as president by 59-year-old Sebastian Coe in August, is himself under investigation by French police on suspicion of taking more than €1million to cover up positive tests. The report says Diack senior and his legal adviser Habib Cisse are also being investigated by the ethics commission. The commission’s report also refers to allegations from Russia’s deputy sports minister Yuri Nagorny that ‘at least’ five other Russian athletes were also involved. According to Nagorny, the report states, ‘a system was put in place at the IAAF level under which athletes with an abnormal blood passport profile would be allowed to keep competing at high level in exchange of cash payments made to the IAAF’. He also alleged that Turkey and Morocco may have been involved in similar schemes. The IAAF said it was angered that its former officials had blackmailed Shobukhova and that they were no longer involved with the organisation. IAAF President Coe added: ‘The life bans announced today could not send a stronger message that those who attempt to corrupt or subvert the sport of athletics will be brought to justice.’