PARIS AFP: The former head of athletics’ world governing body, Lamine Diack, was on Wednesday found guilty by a French court of corruption in covering up Russian doping cases and sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended.
Diack, an 87-year-old Senegalese who led the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), now renamed World Athletics, for 16 years was also fined 500,000 euros ($600,000).
The presiding judge in the court in Paris, Rose-Marie Hunault, said Diack’s actions had “caused serious damage to the fight against doping”.
Other senior figures in track and field, including Diack’s son Papa Massata Diack and the IAAF’s former head of anti-doping Gabriel Dolle, were also given prison terms for their part in a scheme in which 23 Russian athletes had their doping offences hushed up so they could compete at the 2012 London Olympics and 2013 world championships in Moscow.
The judge said Diack was unlikely to go to prison, telling him: “Given your age you can expect conditional release.”
Papa Massata Diack, a former marketing consultant for the IAAF, who was tried in absentia.