Lamine Diack, Coe’s immediate predecessor, was charged by French police with corruption over suspicions he took bribes worth more than one million euros ($1.09 million) to cover up doping cases involving Russian athletes.
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These the son of Diack and the former head of its anti-doping department.
An independent commission set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency will report its findings on Monday.
Coe today said those developments had left him in “clear shock” and provoked “a great deal of anger and a lot of sadness”.
“The allegations that we woke up to around the potential for extortion and blackmail came out of the blue and the vast majority in the sport probably share exactly the same emotions I’ve just expressed”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5’s Sportsweek, Coe admitted these were indeed “dark days” for athletics. “We shouldn’t kid ourselves”, he added. Coe knows he must now be seen to live up to the pledge he made during his presidential election campaign and somehow rebuild trust in athletics after a year of horribly damaging headlines.
He said these are dark days for the sport, but he is determined to introduce sweeping reforms. “It’s not going to be a short journey … this is a long road to redemption”.
Medal winners from the London Olympic Games are among a list of eight Russian athletes who allegedly escaped drug bans after bribes were paid to world athletics chiefs to allow them to compete, according to a newspaper report.
“This report is going to be a real game-changer for sport”, Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer who sits on the three-member panel, said in comments published by Western University in Canada, where he is a professor of law.
Despite being an IAAF vice-president for half of Diack’s 16-year reign, Coe said on Sunday that he had no inkling of any wrongdoing until the allegations surfaced this week.
Diack ended his reign as IAAF president in August, when Briton Coe, a double Olympic 1500m victor, was elected as his replacement. When Shobukhova was banned for two years in 2014, her husband received a US$345,000 refund payment linked to Balakhnichev, the programme said.
Inquiries into malpractices by athletics administrators have already netted immediate former IAAF president Lammine Diack and are likely to trickle down to officials of national federations.
Coe also vowed a review of internal corporate governance, saying an worldwide firm of independent accountants had been “engaged to undertake a thorough review of operational and financial controls with a view to identifying any weaknesses and to make recommendations for improvements to ensure that the IAAF operates an internal control environment that is best in class”.
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With Russian Federation and fellow athletics superpower Kenya both under fire for their high number of positive tests and a wretched anti-doping culture, Coe said he did not support calls for them, or any other country, to be banned from competition.
