Formerly controversial longtime chairman of the International Athletics Federation (IAAF) Lamine Diack of Senegal, who was convicted of corruption last year, has died at the age of 88. His son told Reuters about his death today.
Diack led the IAAF from 1999 to 2015. It later turned out that he was part of a group that helped Russian athletes suspected of doping for bribes.
According to the indictment, together with his accomplices, he thus enriched himself by approximately 3.5 million euros. He accepted bribes from 23,000 to 600,000 euros from 23 Russian athletes to hide their doping offenses and allow them to compete in the 2012 London Olympics and the Moscow World Championships a year later.
Last year, a French court sentenced him to two years in prison and another two years on probation, and fined him half a million euros (over 13 million crowns).
Diack never went behind bars. His lawyers warned of his poor health and claimed that he would not survive the prison. Diack thus remained under house arrest and was later released on bail, so that he was able to return from France to Senegal in May this year.
He spent the rest of his life in his native country. “He died at home around two o’clock in the morning of a natural death,” said his son Papa Massata Diack.
He was also convicted of corruption. As a IAAF marketing advisor, he transferred $ 15 million in television rights and other business transactions to his companies, according to the court.
The court sentenced him to five years in prison and fined him one million euros, but Senegal refused to extradite him.
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