IAAF president Lord Coe is under increasing pressure after a new report claimed “corruption was embedded” within his organisation.
Coe, 59, became boss of the body that governs world athletics last August after eight years as a vice-president.
Since then, the IAAF has come in for heavy criticism, accused of helping cover up systematic doping in Russia.
Now an investigation has concluded the corruption “cannot be blamed on a small number of miscreants” within the IAAF.
An 89-page report, written by former World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound, was particularly damning of former IAAF president Lamine Diack, who stood down in August 2015 after 16 years in charge.
It concluded Diack, from Senegal, was “responsible for organising and enabling the conspiracy and corruption that took place in the IAAF”.
The report also claimed that the IAAF Council, which included Coe, “could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics”.
Yet Pound insisted Coe, a former British MP, was the right man to lead the IAAF out of its current mess.
“As far as the ability of Lord Coe to remain at the head of the IAAF… I think it’s a fabulous responsibility for the IAAF to seize this opportunity and, under strong leadership, to move forward,” said Pound.
“There’s an enormous amount of reputational recovery that needs to occur here and I can’t think of anyone better than Lord Coe to lead that.”
Coe was present in person at Pound’s news conference, having insisted on Wednesday there had been no cover-up.
He also said he had no intention of standing down.
Just how damning is the report?
Diack is firmly in the firing line. The report also concluded he:
- appeared to have created a close inner circle which functioned as “an informal illegitimate governance structure” outside the IAAF;
- sanctioned and appeared to have had personal knowledge of the fraud and the extortion of athletes carried out by the actions of the illegitimate governance structure he put in place.
This section of the report is particularly scathing:
“The corruption that occurred within the IAAF was not at the level of some foreign currency trader in a bank carrying out unauthorised transactions, without the knowledge or permission of the responsible bank officers.
“Here it started with the president of the organisation. It involved the treasurer of the organisation. It involved the personal counsel of the president, acting on instructions of the president. It involved two of the sons of the president, It involved the director of the medical and anti-doping department of the IAAF.
“The corruption was embedded in the organisation. It cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own.
“The IAAF allowed the conduct to occur and must accept its responsibility. Continued denial will simply make it more difficult to make genuine progress.”
A new low for the IAAF?
It was already reeling from a number of damaging revelations and was strongly criticised for its failure to tackle doping.
In fact, it was only after Pound accused Russia of systematic doping practises in the first part of his report last November that the IAAF stepped in and banned Russian athletes from competition.
Speaking before Thursday’s announcement, Gregory Ioannidis, a sports lawyer, said he expected it to be a “very dark day for world athletics”.
Worse could follow, too. French police have issued a ‘wanted’ notice via Interpol for Papa Massata Diack, the son of the former IAAF president Lamine, on charges of corruption and money-laundering.
What now for Coe?
On the day of his election in August, Coe said suggestions his organisation was complicit in a doping scandal were “just inaccurate”.
Thursday’s allegations call into question that argument.
They also add to the pressure on a man who has been a key figure within the IAAF since 2007, when he was made a vice-president.
The former British MP, who led London’s successful staging of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, became IAAF president last year.
Can he survive?
He still has his backers. There’s Pound, for a start, as well as Brendan Foster, who said his close friend was still the right man to lead the IAAF.
“He’s hurting with all this,” said the former British middle-distance runner, prior to Thursday’s announcement. “But Seb Coe is determined like no-one else can be determined. He’s going to change this thing.”
Michele Verroken, the former head of anti-doping at UK Sport, is also backing Coe to lead the IAAF out of trouble.
“If not Seb, who?” she asked. “Quite honestly, he is very capable of doing this. It’s a matter of whether he gets the support to do it.”
Source- Myjoyonline
