Corruption was embedded in IAAF, says Pound

[January 14, 2016]  MUNICH (Reuters) - Corruption within the world athletics body IAAF was not a result of renegade individuals' actions but was embedded in the organization, the head of an independent commission on doping in athletics will say in his report on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

The World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) former president, Dick Pound, who heads the commission into corruption and doping in athletics, set up after reports by the German broadcaster ARD and the Sunday Times last year, is due to present the report in Munich.

"The corruption was embedded in the organization. It cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own," Pound is quoted as saying in his report, the first part of which, in November, presented evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russia.

He says the IAAF needs to be restructured as the corruption "cannot be blamed on a small number of miscreants".

The sport has already been thrown into turmoil by the first part of Pound's report, and by French authorities placing former IAAF president Lamine Diack under formal investigation on suspicion of corruption and money laundering.

Diack's son Papa and two Russian officials were last week banned from athletics for life by an IAAF ethics board for covering up an elite Russian athlete's positive dope test and blackmailing her over it.

According to the AP, the report also says Lamine Diack struck up a friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that the IAAF helped to cover up nine positive tests by Russian athletes ahead of the 2013 World Championships in Moscow.

While the athletes did not compete, their positive doping tests were not pursued further by the athletics body, it says.

French prosecutors are investigating Lamine Diack, his lawyer Habib Cisse, Papa Massata Diack and Gabriel Dolle, the IAAF's former anti-doping director, on suspicion of corruption, and will also give an update on their investigation on Thursday, after the WADA commission's news conference.

The accusations of systematic, state-sponsored doping and related corruption detailed in Pound's first report led to the IAAF banning the Russian athletics federation from the sport.

Pound has said IAAF President Sebastian Coe, a vice president for seven years until his election last year, and fellow vice president Sergey Bubka could have done more to push for reforms at the federation.

Neither the IAAF nor WADA were available for comment.

(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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