D-Day for Diack Corruption Trial

(ATR ) Disgraced ex-IAAF president and IOC member Lamine Diack will know within a month if he’ll be put on trial by French prosecutors.

An official familiar with the now three year inquiry tells Around the Rings prosecutors are recommending that Diack stand trial along with son Papa Massata Diack. A judge is reviewing the case and must make a decision whether to proceed says the official in Paris.

Should the case move to trial, ATR is told that would happen within a couple of months after the judge’s decision.

The Diacks are under investigation for a range of corrupt activities. Wearing the hat of IAAF President, he is said to have solicited bribes to quash positive drug tests from Russian athletes. As an IOC member, Diack is reputed to have acted as a paymaster to other IOC members to secure their support in 2009 for the bid from Rio de Janeiro for 2016, and again in 2013, this time for the winning bid from Tokyo for 2020.

Diack retired from the IOC in 2013 and from the IAAF two years later. Arrested in 2015 by French police, Diack has been confined to France while the investigation proceeded.

Papa Massata, formerly a marketing executive at the IAAF under his father’s command, retreated long ago to home base in Senegal, which has no extradition treaty with France. That protection may be tested before long, however. The coming of the next Youth Olympic Games to Dakar in 2022 will put pressure on the Senegal government to remand him to France. Behind the scenes, the IOC is believed to have already mentioned its discomfort about the situation to government leaders.

The younger Diack is implicated as a go-between who handled negotiations for his father’s sub rosa dealings and then guiding payments through the international banking system.

One of those payments, for about $2 million, has ensnared the leader of the Tokyo 2020 bid, Tsunekazu Takeda. In December he was told by French authorities that he is under suspicion for approving a contract with a Singapore consultant to win IOC votes. Takeda says the contract for the consultant had been vetted before he signed it and that he had done no wrong.

Takeda has since resigned as president of the Japanese Olympic Committee as well as the IOC. He had served as chair of the IOC Marketing Commission since 2013, selected for the prestige post due to his link to Tokyo. Besides the French inquiry, Takeda has an active file with the IOC Ethics Commission.

It is not clear whether the investigation of Takeda will be accelerated with the possible prosecution of the Diacks.

The same can be said for the proceedings in Brazil against Carlos Nuzman, charged with working alongside Diack to splash cash to IOC members in 2009 for the 2016 bid. Like Takeda, Nuzman has suffered a dramatic fall from grace. Arrested, jailed and subject to travel restrictions, Nuzman has gone from one of the most ubiquitous of IOC members to one who vanished from the scene just months after the Olympic flame went out. He relinquished his two decade presidency of the Brazilian Olympic Committee as well as his IOC membership in the aftermath of the charges. He awaits trial in Rio de Janeiro.

Namibia Olympian Frank Frederick is also covered in the French investigation for alleged payments received from Diack to secure his vote. He has been suspended since 2016.

Reported by Ed Hula.