This Wednesday, June 17, 2020, the financial court of Paris required 4 years of prison and 500,000 euros of maximum fine for the former director of World Athletics Lamine Diack.
On the side of prosecutors, the sentence is even heavier: five years in prison and 500,000 euros in fine against his son Papa Massata, former powerful marketing advisor to the International Athletics Federation, who is being prosecuted for breach of trust, corruption and money laundering in organized tape, to appropriate several million euros, the Russian bank VTB, the Korean Samsung or the Chinese channel CCTV. Either by taxing its companies as intermediaries or by allocating exorbitant commissions, sometimes more than 20%, when it was already paid 900 dollars, then 1,200 per day of work as a marketing consultant at the IAAF.
As a reminder, Lamine Diack was president between 1999 and 2005 of the International Athletics Federation (IAAF). His son Papa Massata Diack was absent during the trial. The prosecutor issued a warrant for his arrest. Four other people were also tried (Habib Cissé, Gabriel Dollé, and the other two absent, Valentin Balakhnichev and Alexei Melnikov). Their fault, they allowed to delay from the end of 2011, disciplinary sanctions against Russian athletes suspected of doping, in exchange for money in the form of bribes and for having promoted sponsorship contracts and TV rights.
The national financial prosecutor’s office, for its part, demands that Lamine Diack be condemned for active and passive corruption, organised gang laundering and breach of trust.
The trial must end on Friday with a defence argument followed by a deliberation of the judgement.
