IAAF Bans Three Officials for 180 Days

(ATR) Sebastian Coe’s top aide Nick Davies has been provisionally suspended for 180 days by the IAAF ethics board pending an investigation into "an undisclosed cash payment" connected to the Russian doping scandal.

The IAAF’s deputy general secretary voluntarily stepped aside on Dec. 22, submitting himself to be investigated by the ethics panel to "decide if I am responsible for any breach of the IAAF Code of Ethics", he said in a statement at the time.

On Friday, the track-and-field body’s ethics board released a statement announcing that Davies, together with his wife project manager Jane Boulter-Davies and medical official Pierre-Yves Garnier were provisionally suspended from June 10 "pending investigation of potential breaches" of the IAAF ethics code. Sir Anthony Hooper, a former judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, will conduct the probe.

The ethics board said the suspensions followed "careful consideration of the evidence and information" available to its chairman which in his view warranted investigation of ethics violations. It relates to an email reported to have been sent from former IAAF consultant Papa Diack to his father, the corruption-tarnished former athletics boss Lamine Diack, in July 2013. It was first published by French newspaper Le Monde.

The IAAF statement includes a summary of the email sent by Papa Diack on July 29 that year to his father entitled ‘Strictly Confidential’. He wrote that Valentin Balakhnichev, the disgraced former head of Russian athletics, had asked him "to become internally involved with the IAAF staff who had been antagonistic towards him" concerning Russian doping allegations. The email states that lobbying activities were carried with thousands of dollars paid to IAAF staff, including Davies, his wife and Garnier.

Le Monde’s summary reproduced by the IAAF was that "Papa Massata Diack gave money to various people to keep them quiet and so that they would not object". The trio of IAAF officials are accused of being complicit in a cover-up of Russian doping cases.

Announcing the ethics probe, the IAAF said Nick Davies is accused of receiving "undisclosed cash payment" from Papa Diack "the circumstances and concealment of which call into question whether the payment was intended to have and/or in fact produced any manipulative effect".

The ethics panel will also review whether Davies "misled an IAAF ethics board investigator" in relation to the payment.

The probe will investigate similar allegations against Boulter-Davies and Garnier. The latter is accused of retaining part of the payment made to him "even when aware of its apparent impropriety".

The IAAF said the banned officials could challenge the suspensions under ethics rules.

There was no reference in Friday’s statement about a series of leaked emails from Davies to Papa Diack earlier in July 2013, which emerged in in December, in which Coe’s confidant and long-time ally discusses a plan to delay naming Russian doping cheats ahead of the World Championships in Moscow. Davies said the federation needed "to be smart" about releasing the names of the athletes and that the "Russian skeletons in the cupboard" needed to be discussed.

Responding to the independent ethics panel statement, the IAAF said: "There is no greater priority for the IAAF right now than to get to the truth of the allegations that have been made against the sport. These particular facts were made public in December 2015 and relate to allegations of a breach of the IAAF Code of Ethics.

"The IAAF welcomes these investigations by the Ethics Board and investigator Sir Anthony Hooper and thanks them for the difficult and hard work they continue to undertake on behalf of the sport and the organisation."

The federation noted that that each of the persons provisionally suspended "enjoys the presumption of innocence until the outcome of the investigation and the determination of disciplinary charges, if any, brought against them".

"It is therefore important that we let these investigations take their course without further comment," it said.

News of the investigation comes one week before the IAAF Council meets in Vienna to vote on whether to maintain or lift its ban on Russian athletics taking part at the Rio Olympics in the wake of the state-sponsored doping scandal revealed in a WADA report.

Reported by Mark Bisson

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