Paris (AFP)
The former boss of world athletics Lamine Diack was sentenced Wednesday in Paris to four years in prison, including two years, for his involvement in a corruption network dedicated to hiding doping cases in Russia.
Five years after the scandal broke, the 87-year-old Senegalese, a figure in the sports world who had chaired the International Athletics Federation (IAAF) from 1999 to 2015, was found guilty of active and passive bribery and of breach of trust and was also fined up to 500,000 euros.
The influential former member of the Olympic circle, dressed in a white boubou, listened without reacting to the judgment and left the courtroom free, leaving his lawyers, William Bourdon and Simon Ndiaye, to announce that they were appealing. a decision "unjust and inhuman", which "religiously swallows" the thesis of the prosecution.
Among the six defendants, the heaviest sentence was pronounced against his son, Papa Massata Diack, who remained in Dakar and had refused to appear at the trial in June: the one who directed marketing at the IAAF was sentenced to five years in prison and a million euros fine.
The court upheld the arrest warrant against him.
Regarding Lamine Diack, the sentence is up to the "seriousness of the corruption facts that you were accused of", launched the president of the 32nd correctional chamber, Rose-Marie Hunault.
"You have seriously undermined the fight against doping" and "violated the rules of the game of sports competition," she added.
- All doomed -
In this case which shook the world of sport, the Diack father and son were tried for having allowed the delay, from the end of 2011, of disciplinary proceedings against Russian athletes suspected of blood doping.
Behind this indulgence, an incredible deal, revealed by Lamine Diack himself during the investigation and confirmed by the court: the renewal of IAAF sponsorship and broadcasting contracts with the Russian state bank VTB and public television RTR, as well as funds to finance the opposition to incumbent Abdoulaye Wade during the 2012 presidential election in Senegal.
During the trial, Lamine Diack, who was decorated in the Kremlin at the end of 2011, refuted any political funding, but the court stuck to his first version.
The former head of anti-doping at the IAAF, Gabriel Dollé, received a 2-year suspended sentence and a fine of 140,000 euros, while the lawyer Habib Cissé, who advised Lamine Diack, was sentenced to three years of prison including two suspended sentences and 100,000 euros fine.
Two Russian officials tried by default, former president of the national athletics federation Valentin Balakhnitchev and former coach Alexeï Melnikov were sentenced to three and two years in prison respectively, with the arrest warrant maintained against them. .
From Russia, Valentin Balakhnitchev challenged the judgment.
"They deprived me of my legal right to defend myself, they said I was not cooperating with the investigation, which I categorically disagree with," he told Ria Novosti.
- "Total protection" -
In total, the six defendants were also ordered to pay 10.6 million euros in damages to the IAAF on the corruption component.
But Lamine Diack and his son were also convicted of having collected undue sums on IAAF contracts with sponsors.
On this aspect, they were ordered to pay 5.2 million euros to the international federation.
During the trial Lamine Diack had conceded having given the order to spread the sanctions against the Russians, a version confirmed by Gabriel Dollé.
But for them, the financial survival of the IAAF was at stake, an argument that did not convince the court.
The court ruled that for at least six Russian athletes, disciplinary proceedings were three years late and that the athletes had to pay for "full protection".
The central piece of the prosecution is a transfer of 300,000 euros received by the marathon runner Lilya Shobukhova, from an account linked to Papa Massata Diack, as a refund when she was finally suspended in 2014. A note, found at the lawyer Habib Cissé, declines other sums next to the names of runners, for a total estimated by the court at 3.2 million euros.
The money was not found and the Russian athletes were not heard, which the defense denounced.
Lamine Diack's lawyers hoped above all that their client would avoid prison.
For the time being, he has not finished with French justice.
With his son, he is implicated in a second investigation in Paris on suspicion of corruption in the attribution of the Rio-2016 and Tokyo-2020 Olympics.
Lamine Diack will soon be heard in this case.
© 2020 AFP