PARIS – Lawyers for Papa Massata Diack, the son of the disgraced former head of global athletics, called in an appeal hearing in Paris on Thursday for his corruption conviction to be overturned.
Diack, whose late father Lamine headed the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) – now called World Athletics – from 1999 to 2015, was one of six men convicted in France in 2020 for hushing up 23 Russian doping offences in exchange for Russian sponsorship contracts.
He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined €1 million (S$1.43 million).
The trial heard that as a result of hiding the doping cases, the Russian athletes were able to compete at the 2012 London Olympics and 2013 world championships in Moscow.
Papa Massata Diack, known as PMD, had a high-profile role as a marketing consultant for the IAAF.
The 57-year-old remains in his native Senegal, which refuses to extradite him.
PMD was found guilty of being an accomplice in a bribery scheme and of having embezzled funds to the tune of €15 million at the expense of the IAAF.
Antoine Beauquier, defending Diack, argued at the hearing that the athletics federation had been the “main beneficiary” of the contracts he negotiated.
In transferring money from those sponsorship deals to a PMD-linked company that acted as a middleman, his client had acted with the IAAF’s blessing, Beauquier added.
“The funds were paid with the agreement of the IAAF to a company as a result of a contract that had been audited,” he said.
Another defence lawyer, Hugues Vigier, said: “Everything was authorised and endorsed by all (the members of the IAAF’s top leadership), including the financial director.”
A lawyer representing World Athletics, Regis Bergonzi, told the hearing on Wednesday that PMD and his father, who died in 2021, had overseen a corrupt network that set out to hide drug offences and delay or erase sanctions for Russian athletes who doped.
“They destroyed the honour of athletics and the federation,” he said.
World Athletics, now headed by British two-time Olympic 1,500m champion Sebastian Coe, is seeking €41.2 million in damages.
The court will deliver its verdict in the appeal on March 9. AFP
