IAAF Corruption was ‘Embedded in the Organisation’: Wada Report

Dick Pound, former president of WADA presented a report on corruption in IAAF in Munich.

The former president of World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA), Dick Pound, who heads the commission into corruption and doping in athletics, has presented a report on International Associations of Athletic Federations in Munich on Thursday.

The corruption was embedded in the organisation. It cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own.

Dick Pound, Former President, WADA

The first part of Pound’s report, in November, presented evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russia. He said the IAAF needs to be restructured as the corruption “cannot be blamed on a small number of miscreants”.

Diack’s son Papa and two Russian officials were last week banned from athletics for life by an IAAF ethics board for covering up an elite Russian athlete’s positive dope test and blackmailing her over it.

The report also says Lamine Diack struck up a friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that the IAAF helped to cover up nine positive tests by Russian athletes ahead of the 2013 World Championships in Moscow.

While the athletes did not compete, their positive doping tests were not pursued further by the athletics body, it says.

French prosecutors are investigating Lamine Diack, his lawyer Habib Cisse, Papa Massata Diack and Gabriel Dolle, the IAAF’s former anti-doping director, on suspicion of corruption, and will also give an update on their investigation on Thursday.

The accusations of systematic, state-sponsored doping and related corruption detailed in Pound’s first report led to the IAAF banning the Russian athletics federation from the sport.

Pound has said IAAF President Sebastian Coe, a vice president for seven years until his election last year, and fellow vice president Sergey Bubka could have done more to push for reforms at the federation.

Neither the IAAF nor WADA were available for comment.