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 According to leaks to a French investigative news organization,
Mediapart, the WADA report will say that athletics officials tried
to extort money from leading athletes, including a Turkish Olympic
champion, in return for concealing the fact that they had failed
drugs tests.
One of the co-authors of the report, Richard McLaren, a Canadian law
professor and sports lawyer, told the Sunday Times: "This is a whole
different scale of corruption than the FIFA scandal. This report is
going to be a real game-changer.
"Here you potentially have a bunch of old men who put a whole lot of
extra money in their pockets -- through extortion and bribes -- but
also caused significant changes to actual results and final
standings of international athletics competitions."
FIFA has been thrown into turmoil by the U.S. indictments of 14
soccer officials and sports marketing executives for alleged
corruption, and its president Sepp Blatter is suspended and facing
criminal investigation in Switzerland.
The former head of the International Association of Athletics
Federations, Lamine Diack of Senegal, was last week placed under
formal judicial investigation in France on suspicion of corruption,
along with two other former IAAF officials.
His successor, Briton Sebastian Coe, told Reuters on Sunday: "My job
is very simple now and there is no ambiguity about it. It is to
rebuild trust in our sport."
He said it would be "a long road to redemption".
RUSSIAN CONNECTION
The WADA report, according to the leaked French account, is expected
to implicate relations of Diack. One of his sons has left his
marketing role within the IAAF while under investigation for corrupt
practices. The family has dismissed what they described as excessive
and insignificant accusations.
The report is also expected to single out former Russian athletics
federation head Valentin Balakhnichev.
On Saturday Balakhnichev rejected allegations that his federation
worked with top IAAF officials to try to blackmail athletes in the
run-up to the 2012 London Olympics.
"Let them present their claims to me, I will fight them," Russian
news agencies quoted him as saying.
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Among athletes allegedly targeted for extortion was Russian marathon
runner Liliya Shobukhova, who featured in a German documentary in
December 2014 that alleged systematic doping by Russian athletes.
Shobukhova was banned for doping and was stripped of marathon
victories in London and Chicago. But two months ago, WADA cut her
ban, saying she had provided it with important information to expose
wrongdoing by others.
Turkey's Asli Cakir Alptekin, the 1,500 meters Olympic champion in
2012, was also approached by IAAF officials demanding payment of
$500,000, according to the leaks.
She was give a second doping ban last summer and stripped of her
Olympic medal.
On Sunday IAAF chief Coe said neither he nor anyone else at the IAAF
had seen the report, but he was shocked and saddened by the
accusations against his predecessor Diack.
"I will await the WADA report but I think the focus of those
allegations was about the ability of people to be in a position to
manipulate systems and that is what we will look at very carefully,"
Coe told Reuters after announcing he had accelerated a planned
internal reform process.
"If that is found to be the case, then clearly we need to have
systems in place that are not just about secure systems but people
inside those systems being secure and proper people."
WADA will release its report at 1400 GMT on Monday and hold a news
conference immediately afterwards in Geneva.
(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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