Germany’s athletics chief has called for an extraordinary meeting of the IAAF as the second part of the World Anti-Doping Agency report heaps more pressure on the sport’s scandal-hit governing body.
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German athletics president Clemens Prokop said the allegations of corruption against the leadership of the IAAF are so damning that a meeting must be called.
The report said Diack, who is the subject of a criminal investigation in France, created an “illegitimate governance structure” that included his sons and his personal lawyer, and that this shadow group interfered with the normal functions of the IAAF’s anti-doping department. “It can not be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own”.
Coe accepted that the organization’s Council, of which he was a long-standing member, should have been aware of the corruption and told Reuters he would introduce reforms to ensure there would be no repeat.
Pound had already rocked the sport in November with the release of the first part of his report, which led to athletics superpower Russian Federation being banned from competition for state-sponsored doping.
The report said former head of world athletics, Lamine Diack ran a clique that covered up organised doping and blackmailed athletes while senior officials looked the other way.
Last week, Papa Masata Diack was banned for life by the IAAF ethics commission for corruption and cover-up allegations linked to Russian doping.
“We have done an enormous amount since 1999, to make sure that that can not happen”, Pound said, referring to the cleanup after the Salt Lake City bidding scandal.
French prosecutors investigating Diack and his son have told Sky News they are examining potential links to both World Championships and Olympic Games bidding processes.
It was not tough enough with “several countries” including Russian Federation, the report said, indicating that doping scandals were not limited to Russian Federation.
He was succeeded by Coe who has admitted he now presides over a “failed organization”.
The Guardian reported that the leaked emails from October 2011 contain what appears to be Diack asking for US$ 4.5 million to be transferred to his bank account, and another US$ 440,000 to be collected by him in person in Qatar’s capital, Doha.
He said the IAAF had displayed “no genuine appetite to deal with the problems”.
Richard McLaren, a member of the independent panel that produced the latest report on the world governing body, wants an investigation into how world championships were awarded under the regime of Lamine Diack.
“I can’t think of anyone better than Lord Coe to lead that”.
The report into IAAF governance was highly critical of Diack, who was in charge for 16 years.
Reedie also said he would like to thank “the courageous whistle-blowers and investigative journalists” who brought evidence of corruption to WADA.
November 18, 2015: WADA declare the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) non-complaint with global sport’s anti-doping code with immediate effect.
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“I will put systems in place for the current council and so that my successor is never in a position that we don’t understand the nature of the day-to-day running of the organisation”, he said.
