Four other officials were handed jail sentences along with former IAAF President Lamine Diack and his son Papa Massata Diack in a doping-related corruption scandal.
The 87-year-old Lamine Diack was sentenced to four years in prison last week, though two of those years are suspended. His son was sentenced to five years in prison, though he lives in Senegal and the government there has refused to extradite him.
The Paris court also sentenced four others, according to The Guardian:
- Habib Cissé – three years in prison, €100,000 fine
- Gabriel Dollé – two-year suspended prison sentence, €144,000 fine
- Valentin Balakhnichev – three years in prison
- Alexei Melnikov – two years in prison
Diack was the president of IAAF, the international federation for athletics. He led that organization from 1999 until 2015. Diack was arrested in France in 2015 as allegations of corruption began to come to light. He was found guilty of corruption and breach of trust, while he was acquitted of money laundering. According to The Associated Press, Diack was involved in a scheme that allowed Russian athletes to escape doping sanctions by paying “hush money.”
Cisse was Lamine Diack‘s lawyer, who helped funnel the payoffs though legal aid fees. Dolle was the IAAF’s head of anti-doping, whom Lamine Diack paid to overlook the payoffs. Balakhnichev was the IAAF’s treasurer, who was allegedly present in a meeting between the Diakcs and Russian officials to close a “full protection” deal for implicated Russian athletes. Melnikov is a former distance coach on the Russian national team.
The Diacks have also come under scrutiny for payments transferred around the time that Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Olympics.
Inside the Games reports that a consultancy firm called Black Tidings transferred $370,000 to Papa Massata Diack around the same time that Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Olympics. Diack says the money was related to a sponsorship deal made in China. French authorities are investigating payments of about $2 million to Black Tidings over allegations of payoffs to decide the 2020 Olympic host.
