The lawyer for the International Athletics Federation denounced Wednesday before the Paris Court of Appeal a “banana organization” of the body when it was led by the Senegalese Lamine Diack between 1999 and 2015.
Me Régis Bergonzi notably explained how, according to him, the former president of the IAAF, now called World Athletics, recruited his son Papa Massata Diack as a marketing consultant, creating, with him and accomplices, a network of embezzlement and of corruption to hide cases of doping among Russian athletes in 2011.
“This file is not a story of racketeering at the margin of athletes, the heart of the matter is a system of embezzlement at the IAAF [grâce à] the closeness, the collaboration between the father and the son, ”he said at the helm.
For French justice, the Diacks were at the center of a corruption pact to delay the sanctions procedures aimed at Russian athletes suspected of doping at the end of 2011, allowing some of them to participate in the London Olympics in 2012. In return, the Russian sponsors had renewed their partnership contracts with the IAAF for the 2013 Worlds in Moscow.
Papa Massata Diack, 57, was convicted in September 2020 of complicity in corruption in the Russian affair and embezzlement of 15 million euros under cover of commissions on sponsorship contracts and television rights. He had been sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of one million euros.
Assuring his innocence, he resides in Dakar and affirms that he cannot leave Senegal where he is under judicial control in this same case.
A “totally bled” beast
The sponsorship contracts with the Russian bank VTB running until 2015 amounted to 65.5 million euros. But the IAAF “only received 1/5e of the sums paid, i.e. nearly 13 million euros”, said Me Bergonzi, assuring that the international federation “is the beast that we have completely bled”. He also mentioned complex systems of retrocommissions via front companies for television rights contracts or exorbitant commissions for certain contracts.
“We destroyed the honor of athletics and the federation”, renamed World Athletics. “We threw our brand, IAAF, in the trash,” he added, asking for a total of 41.2 million euros in damages.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) demanded a symbolic euro, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) 300,000 euros in compensation for the six defendants, four of whom are on appeal and only one is present in the box.
Habib Cissé, former personal adviser to Lamine Diack, denied on Wednesday having been an accomplice in a corrupt enterprise in the Russian doping affair.
At the helm, he assured that the notification procedures for several athletes had been “staggered” from November 2011 because these cases detected thanks to the biological passport set up two years earlier “did not have the same degree of maturity » depending on the level of doping.
Its mission, which was to notify Valentin Balakhnitchev, then president of the Russian Athletics Federation, of suspected cases that needed to be investigated, “was educational: to inform, explain and assist” Russian sports officials, “fiercely opposed” to this new biological passport. At the end of 2012, when Mr. Balakhnichev had refused to take five letters of notification, he had realized that “the chance” given to the Russian side “did not[vait] didn’t work”, and that he would “have to move on to litigation”, which was no longer his domain.
According to the 52-year-old lawyer, the Russian side believed that the IAAF was “relentless” on Moscow when suspected cases were detected in British and Chinese athletes.
Mr. Cissé, sentenced at first instance to three years in prison, two of which were suspended, was also found guilty of having received 3.45 million euros, withdrawn from Russian athletes to remove them from the list of suspected athletes of doping.
overwhelming appearances
The investigators had found a list at his home containing the names of several athletes and sums of money. They had also exhumed a conversation by SMS with Papa Massata Diack where it was a question of “reimbursement”.
“Appearances are overwhelming,” he admitted, assuring that he had “never asked for money” because it was “impossible to promise such protection”.
Two other convicted at first instance, Mr. Balakhnitchev and another former Russian sports official, Alexei Melnikov, are also retried in absence.
Lamine Diack, influential president of the IAAF from 1999 to 2015, and the organization’s former anti-doping chief, Frenchman Gabriel Dollé, have died since their conviction.
The debates must end on Thursday with the indictment of the general counsel and the pleadings of the lawyers. Judgment will be reserved.