The long-awaited corruption trial of the former IAAF president Lamine Diack has been delayed until June after new documents were presented at the last minute by his son and co-defendant, Papa Massata Diack.
The Diacks, along with four other former senior figures in athletics, are accused of being part of a scheme that involved extorting 23 Russian athletes for between €100,000 and €600,000 in exchange for delaying doping sanctions so they could compete at the London 2012 Olympics.
But the case was suspended almost immediately after it opened on Monday in the criminal court in Paris when prosecutors revealed they received new evidence shortly before the hearing opened. Holding up three thick folders of notes, they asked for, and received, a delay in the trial. They said the evidence included statements that Massata Diack made to investigators in Senegal and banking details from three of his consultancy firms.
From Senegal Massata Diack told the Guardian that he and his father’s legal team questioned the right of the French prosecutors to put them on trial. “The IAAF is a private law association of Monaco and its head office is in the principality of Monaco,” he wrote. “The charges did not occur in France and no French legal person or individual was damaged by President Lamine Diack and his son.”
Among 16 criticisms of the French investigation the statement claims that Lamine Diack was “arrested on Sunday morning while holding a Senegalese diplomatic passport – and his investigator did not even wait to consult the Embassy of Senegal in Paris and the ministry of business French foreigners before triggering the preliminary police investigation”.
This, the document states, is “in violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention concerning the holders of a diplomatic passport”.
Diack is charged with corruption, money laundering and breach of trust. Prosecutors say he directly or indirectly solicited €3.45m from athletes suspected by the IAAF of doping who paid to have their names cleared so they could continue competing.
Prosecutors also charged Diack for involvement in a $1.5m payment from Russia to finance presidential and legislative election campaigns in Senegal in 2012, in exchange for slowing down doping cases targeting Russian athletes.
Diack is also accused of having enabled his son to embezzle IAAF sponsorship revenue from Russia’s VTB Bank, Chinese oil firm Sinopec and broadcaster CCTV, South Korean tech giant Samsung and others.
At one point the 86-year-old staggered to his feet and approached the three judges to beg to be allowed to return to Senegal to see his elderly brother. His request was denied.
Massata Diack, a former IAAF marketing executive, also faces corruption, money laundering and breach of trust charges. He remains in exile in Senegal, with the country defying France’s attempts to extradite him.
Massata Diack also denied any wrongdoing and said he doubted the Senegalese government would make him go. “Britain and France never extradite their citizens. Why would Senegal do it to a country that does not have legal competence to investigate a federation based on Monaco?” he wrote. “I am not going to waste my time in France!!”
He denied a deal had been done with the Russians to help with elections in Senegal. “There is no proof that Lamine Diack has received 1,500,000 Euros for the 2012 Senegalese electoral campaign,” he wrote.
“They have traced all our Bank account transfers using TRACFIN,” he added. “Where is the money? After four years of investigation. The French judges after this lengthy investigation should have more concrete evidence.”
Four other men are also due to stand trial in Paris. They include the Russian coach Alexei Melnikov and Valentin Balakhnichev, a former IAAF treasurer, who were banned from athletics for life for causing “unprecedented damage” to the sport along with Massata Diack after being found guilty of corruption, blackmail and extortion charges in 2016.
Habib Cissé – Lamine Diack’s legal counsel – who was banned from athletics for life last September, is also accused, as is the former IAAF anti-doping chief Gabriel Dollé, who was banned from athletics for five years for his part in the scheme to extort money from athletes. All deny the charges.