Paris (AFP)
Former boss of world athletics, Lamine Diack, tried in Paris for corruption on doping background in Russia, denied Thursday having requested funds from Moscow to finance a presidential campaign in Senegal in 2012, contradicting what he has could say during the investigation.
It was at the request of his own lawyer, Me Simon Ndiaye, that the 87-year-old Senegalese, whose responses at the helm were sometimes disjointed and not very audible, tried to make a point.
"Did you ask the Russians to finance the campaign?" Asked Mr. Ndiaye.
"I am 87 years old, I can still look at myself for five minutes in the mirror, I never asked anyone for money," replied Lamine Diack, without hiding his enmity for the outgoing Presidential of the 'Abdoulaye Wade, finally defeated by current President Macky Sall.
"If I were to ask the Russians for money, I ask (Vladimir) Putin, I do not ask (Vitali) Moutko", the former Russian Sports Minister, with whom Lamine Diack had lunch in Moscow, when the two men have reportedly raised the subject of the 2012 Senegalese presidential election.
Lamine Diack also assured that he had not supported Macky Sall in this election.
In police custody and then before the investigating judge, he had however raised a request for funding from the Russians to make Wade beat in this election, in exchange for a deferred treatment of cases of doping of Russian athletes by the international federation athletics (IAAF). He also mentioned the sum of $ 1.5 million, retained by the examining magistrates in their order for reference to found prosecutions for money laundering in an organized gang.
"It was necessary to finance in particular the travel of young people in order to fight the campaign (...) I therefore needed funding to rent vehicles, to rent meeting rooms, to make leaflets in all the villages and all the districts of cities of Senegal ", he had explained in particular, according to the order of dismissal of the examining magistrates.
Valentin "Balakhnitchev", then president of the Russian athletics federation (ARAF) "was part of the Putin team and at that time there were problems with the suspension of Russian athletes a few months before the world championships in Russia (from 2013). I had to win Dakar. We got along. Russia funded, "added Lamine Diack.
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