He reigned for 16 years in world athletics, before being overtaken by scandals and becoming the symbol of the businessism that plagued the international federation (World Athletics, ex-IAAF).

Senegalese Lamine Diack died at the age of 88, on the night of Thursday to Friday in Dakar.

The first non-European president of the body (from 1999 to 2015), a major politician in his country (mayor of Dakar from 1978 to 1980, parliamentarian from 1978 to 1993), saw his record and his reputation tarnished by the accumulation of accusations at the end of his career.

The date for a new trial remains to be determined.

Considered one of the key players in a corruption system aimed at covering up doping cases in Russia, he was, in September 2020, sentenced by French justice to four years in prison, two of which is closed, and to 500,000 euros fine for corruption and breach of trust.

He had appealed against this conviction and a date for a new trial remained to be determined.

He had also been indicted for passive corruption in the investigation into the attribution of the Olympic Games in Rio (2016), Tokyo (2020) and the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

A terrible fall for the former leader, who returned to Senegal in May, for the first time since his indictment in 2015, and liked to recall the time of his splendor that he had had "several lives".

It was the jump which, in 1958, made Lamine Diack the winner at the French Athletics Championships.

© Universal / Corbis / VCG via Getty Images pic.twitter.com/ahKluENE4G

- 𝐋𝐞𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 🇸🇳 (@ LamineNdiay11) December 3, 2021

Long jumper in the jersey of the France team, then football player - his passion - and national technical director of the Senegal team after independence in 1960 (between 1964 and 1968), Lamine Diack then led peer of prolific careers in politics and in national and then international sporting bodies.

First president of the Senegalese National Olympic Committee, then vice-president of the international athletics federation, he took the reins by acclamation in December 1999 on the death of the Italian Primo Nebiolo.

His son also involved

But it took the end of his four terms for suspicion of a deeply rooted culture of corruption to emerge, with family ramifications.

His son Papa Massata, ex-IAAF marketing advisor, was also tried in Paris for corruption and organized money laundering.

The Diack clan was accused of having delayed disciplinary sanctions against Russian athletes suspected of doping in exchange for renewals of sponsorship and television broadcasting contracts for the 2013 Worlds in Moscow and funds from the Russian power to finance the opposition to outgoing Abdoulaye Wade during the 2012 presidential election in Senegal, won by Macky Sall.

Despite the terrible ball of corruption, Diack could boast of having globalized the first Olympic sport.

From an accounting standpoint, television and sponsorship revenues have thus risen in 15 years to more than one billion euros.

A legacy swept away by business, which caused the loss of important sponsors to the international federation.

Sport

Corruption and doping: Two years in prison for the former president of the International Federation Lamine Diack

Sport

Suspicion of corruption: The financial prosecutor wants a trial against the former boss of world athletics

  • Justice

  • Corruption

  • Athletics

  • Doping

  • Senegal

  • Sport

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