(ATR) The corruption trial of Lamine Diack and his son, scheduled to begin on Monday after a four-year investigation by the French Financial Prosecutor’s Office, has been pushed back until June.
Diack, 86, is accused of bribery and money laundering to purchase the votes of IOC members for Olympic host cities. He is also implicated in the cover-up of doping violations of Russian athletes while he was president of the athletics federation IAAF, now known as World Athletics.
Diack, a former member of the IOC, is accused along with five other people including his son Papa Massata. The younger Diack remains in Senegal where he has managed to escape extradition to France. But he did give testimony in Senegal in November. His statements and other new documents were presented to the Paris court on Monday. The court postponed the trial to give all parties in the case time to review the new evidence.
Two of the remaining four co-defendants in the trial -- former IAAF anti-doping chief Gabrile Dolle and Diack’s former legal advisor Habib Cisse – were in court on Monday. The other two, Russians Valentin Balakhnichev and Alexei Melnikov, have stayed in Moscow. They are being tried in absentia.
The BBC is reporting that World Athletics is seeking $45.9 million from the six defendants, claiming loss of sponsorship revenue, damage to reputation and potential loss of earnings.
All of the defendants maintain their innocence.
The elder Diack, who has been under house arrest in France for more than four years, appealed to the court to let him return to Senegal but the request was denied.
Written by Gerard Farek
For general comments or questions,click here.
Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
