IAAF president denies BBC claims that he mislead MP’s

A BBC Panorama investigation aired on 16 June claims that Lord Sebastian Coe, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), has misled a UK parliamentary select committee regarding when he became aware of the doping allegations and corruption in athletics. The programme also claims that Lord Coe consulted with Papa Massata Diack when running for the IAAF presidency in 2015.

Speaking at a parliamentary select committee meeting in December 2015, Lord Coe stated that he did not know about the doping allegations before they became public. However, according to the BBC, Lord Coe received an email four months before appearing before the committee, claiming that senior officials at IAAF, including Papa Massata Diack, the son of the former IAAF president, Lamine Diack, and former IAAF marketing consultant, had been involved in corruption, extortion and bribery.

On June 17, during an IAAF press conference in Vienna announcing the decision to uphold the ban on Russian Athletics, Coe defended himself against the BBC allegations. The IAAF president pointed out that he had established the IAAF’s ethics committee which banned a number of senior officials for life, including Papa Massata Diack, Valentin Balakhnichev, the ex-IAAF treasurer and president of the All-Russian Athletics Federation, and Alexeu Melnikov, the former Russian endurance head coach. “I actually take some pride that when I rejoined the IAAF in any practical way in 2013 I drove through the Ethics Board”, Coe said, reports The Guardian from Vienna.

The BBC panorama programme further suggests that Seb Coe may have consulted with Papa Massata Diack, who was banned from the sport for life earlier this year by an IAAF independent ethics committee due to corruption and cover-up of allegations linked to Russian doping. The former IAAF marketing consultant also allegedly shared information about Sergey Bubka, Coe’s rival, during the election campaign.

In response to the Panorama programme, the IAAF released an official statement “strongly refuting” the allegations. The statement says that Coe passed on information regarding corruption to the IAAF Ethics Commission.

“He (Coe) did receive an email from Dave Bedford that said ‘The attachments relate to an issue that is being investigated by the IAAF Ethics Commission’,” the statement says. “This was enough for Seb Coe to forward the email to the Ethic Commission. He did not feel it was necessary to read the attachments.”

The IAAF official statement also refuted suggestions that Seb Coe consulted with Papa Massata Diack during his presidency campaign, after Diack had been linked to corruption.

“As with any campaign, lots of people offer advice – wanted or not, some helpful, some not. You try to be civil but wary,” the IAAF states.