Lord Coe presents himself as the man who can rebuild ‘trust’ in athletics after the worst corruption scandal in the history of sport. He is now the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) — a double Olympic champion who says he is intent on cleaning up his organisation as well as his sport.
He says he was as horrified as anyone when it emerged that an extortion racket allegedly being run by senior IAAF officials was allowing drug cheats to compete.
An independent investigation ordered by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) concluded last year that these officials ‘sabotaged’ the 2012 Olympic Games which Coe was credited with delivering for London. But Coe has said he did not even begin to understand the extent of the corruption involving Russian athletes until the allegations were made public by a German broadcaster in December 2014.
This despite serving as vice- president of the IAAF for seven years prior to becoming the most powerful man in his sport last August.
Today, however, Sportsmail reveals new evidence which questions whether Coe is the right man to lead athletics out of the dark.
Indeed, whether he should be chairing a press conference in Vienna today where it will be announced whether Russia’s track and field stars will be allowed to go to this summer’s Rio Olympics.
One WADA official has described Coe’s actions as ‘digusting’ while a leading MP has claimed Coe misled a parliamentary select committee.
After an investigation conducted with the BBC’s Panorama, which aired its Seb Coe and the Corruption Scandal programme last night, Sportsmail can reveal that Coe received detailed evidence of serious allegations of corruption in athletics four months before they were first broadcast in a German documentary.
The BBC has also gathered evidence that strongly suggests Coe turned to Papa Massata Diack, the disgraced former official at the centre of the corruption scandal, to help him win the presidential election. Coe now stands accused of ‘misleading’ a parliamentary select committee. MP Damian Collins insists his position will be untenable unless he can now provide a ‘robust explanation’ for his comments and his alliance with allegedly corrupt officials. Collins believes Coe may have been ‘compromised’ by that alliance.
When, in December 2015, Coe was asked by MP Ian Lucas during the select committee proceedings why the IAAF had not tackled the Russian doping scandal sooner when he had ‘such a prominent role in the organisation’, Coe replied: ‘We were not aware — I was certainly not aware — of the specific allegations that had been made around the corruption of anti-doping processes in Russia.’
When MP Paul Farrelly asked him if he was aware of allegations against Papa Massata Diack, Coe replied: ‘They were allegations aired in the ARD documentary and after that he stepped down.’
During an interview with ITN in November, Coe was asked how he knew so little of what was going on. ‘The allegations that corruption has taken place in our organisation are truly shocking,’ he said.
‘And, no, I did not know the basis of those allegations.’ He told Channel 4’s Jon Snow: ‘Those allegations have come as a shock.’ But Sportsmail can reveal Coe received detailed allegations about the corruption as early as August 2014, when he was sent a complaint that concerned Russian Liliya Shobukhova. The former London marathon winner was asked to pay 450,000 euros to officials to conceal her doping offences and allow her to run in the London Olympics.
When Shobukhova was eventually banned for doping offences, a sum of 300,000 euros was repaid to her from an account belonging to Black Tidings. That company in Singapore is controlled by a business associate of Papa Massata Diack, who is also now the focus of a criminal investigation by the French financial authorities.
Evidence seen by Sportsmail and the BBC confirms that in August 2014 Coe received a copy of the Shobukhova complaint via email to his official IAAF address, which also directly implicated Papa Massata Diack.
The email — seen by the Sportsmail and the BBC — contained the complaint that was written in April 2014 by Andrey Baranov, the agent of Shubokhova, with the assistance of the IAAF distance running official, Sean Wallace-Jones.
The complaint had been submitted to the IAAF ethics commission with the help of London Marathon boss David Bedford. But, publicly, the IAAF said nothing.
Four months later, in August 2014, Bedford decided to bring it to the attention of the one man in the IAAF he felt he could trust. He emailed the complaint to the then vice-president, Lord Coe.
Sportsmail and the BBC have seen the complaint and it details the corruption, extortion and bribery allegations as well as the suggestion that Papa Massata Diack, the son of the then president Lamine Diack, was directly implicated.
MP Collins said: ‘On the evidence about doping in Russia, I think this is really significant information — that he (Coe) was sent the detailed allegations four months before the evidence became public and yet denied any knowledge. To the select committee he made it clear he had no specific knowledge of the allegations. That clearly wasn’t true. His response was misleading to the select committee.’
A spokeswoman for Coe came back with a response that was anything but robust. Despite the explosive nature of the email and the fact Coe employed two personal assistants to monitor all correspondence, he did not open the attachments to read the contents.
‘Seb does not even have a computer,’ insisted the spokeswoman. ‘The only thing you can accuse him of is a lack of curiosity.’
This is the same Seb Coe who chaired the FIFA ethics commission and saw nothing untoward there, either.
A statement issued by Coe’s spokeswoman said: ‘The (IAAF) ethics commission (as it then was) was deliberately established as a quasi-judicial body to investigate all allegations of corruption and breaches of the IAAF rules. It is independent of the IAAF.
‘Seb Coe was forwarded a number of emails and information regarding allegations of corruption and concerning the behaviour of certain individuals.
‘All of this material was sent by him to the ethics commission whose remit is to investigate such matters and then to pass judgement. Seb Coe was subsequently contacted by the ethics commission to say they were already aware of the allegations and the matters were all being actively investigated and he therefore left them to do so.
‘Seb has never denied hearing rumours about corruption. In fact he has said on many occasions that when alerted to rumours he asked people to pass them to the ethics commission to be investigated.
‘He did receive an email from Dave Bedford that said, “The attachments relate to an issue that is being investigated by the IAAF EC (Michael Beloff)”. This was enough for Seb Coe to forward the email to the ethics commission. He did not feel it was necessary to read the attachments.
‘You may think this shows a lack of curiosity. He, and we, would argue that it shows a full duty of care. Ensuring the right people in the right place were aware of allegations and were investigating them.’ – Daily Mail