Papa Massata Diack, a former marketing consultant for the International Athletics Federation, has had his prison sentence confirmed. This occurs in the context of the doping case of Russian athletes in 2011. The court, on the other hand, halved, to 500,000 euros, the fine imposed at first instance on the former marketing consultant of the International Sports Federation. athletics (IAAF), which has since become World Athletics, which did not attend the trial or the hearing on Thursday.
She also confirmed the fine of 100,000 euros against Habib Cissé, the former legal adviser to Lamine Diack. But she suspended her three-year prison sentence, while Cissé had been sentenced to one year and two suspended sentences at first instance. The court also halved the amounts awarded to World Athletics, which claimed 10.5 million euros in moral damages. In January, the public prosecutor’s office requested confirmation of the first instance convictions against the two men.
“Stupefaction”
Massata Diack’s lawyer, Marie-Sophie Goldschmidt, expressed her “astonishment” at this conviction on appeal. She denounced an “unfair” judgment which is a “copy and paste” of that of the first instance. She specified that she would discuss with her client a possible appeal in cassation. Lawyers for World Athletics and Habib Cissé declined to comment.
Papa Massata Diack was found guilty in September 2020 of complicity in a bribery scheme aimed at hiding cases of blood doping in Russian athletes in 2011, a year before the London Olympics. By dragging out the sanction procedures against these athletes with suspicious biological passports, the International Federation had allowed some of them to participate in these Games. In return, the major Russian sponsors had renewed their partnership contracts with the IAAF, which has since become World Athletics, for the 2013 Worlds in Moscow.
Nicknamed “PMD”, Diack junior had also been found guilty of having embezzled funds to the tune of 15 million euros on sponsorship contracts, via an assembly of front companies. Aged 57, he has always claimed his innocence from Senegal, a country he says he cannot leave because he is under judicial supervision in the same case. The lawyer for the international federation, Me Régis Bergonzi, had denounced during the appeal trial a “banana organization” of the IAAF in the time of Lamine Diack, between 1999 and 2015, a president surrounded by faithful and who monetized loyalties .
“Total Protection”
At first instance, five other protagonists, including Lamine Diack, were convicted. Diack senior and the former IAAF anti-doping chief, Frenchman Gabriel Dollé, died in 2021 and the charges against them died out. Two Russian sports officials at the material time, Valentin Balakhnitchev and Alexei Melnikov, did not appeal. In January, only Habib Cissé appeared before the Court of Appeal. He also denied being an accomplice in the Russian case.
The former personal adviser to Lamine Diack, aged 52, thus assured the bar that the notifications concerning several athletes to the Russian federation (ARAF) had been treated on a “case by case” basis, depending on the degree of suspicion of doping, pointing out that all the suspected athletes had finally been suspended. Habib Cissé was also found guilty of having received 3.45 million euros, withdrawn from Russian athletes in exchange for “total protection”, that is to say their disappearance from the list of athletes suspected of doping.
The investigators had found a list at his home containing the names of several athletes and sums of money. They had also exhumed a conversation by SMS with “PMD” where it was a question of “reimbursement”. The affair, which had shaken the world of sport, had been revealed by the agent of the Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova, who had paid 450,000 euros to disappear from the list. Finally suspended in 2014, she had requested a refund and received 300,000 euros from an account in Singapore which made it possible to go back to “PMD”.