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The Paris Court of Appeal has given a five-year prison sentence to Senegal’s Papa Massata Diack.
The former marketing consultant of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF, now World Athletics) was convicted in September 2020 in a case related to the Russian state-sponsored doping scandal.
WADA pleased after Diack sentenced to five years in prison – InsideTheGames
— Anti-Doping Database (@Dopinglist) March 11, 2023
The World Anti-Doping Agency has hailed the decision by a Court of Appeal in Paris to confirm a five-year prison sentence on Papa Massata Diack as�…https://t.co/Yy6bfrOKBU
Diack is the son of Lamine Diack, who was the president of the IAAF for 16 years. The senior Diack was convicted of accepting $3.8 million in bribes from athletes who were suspected of doping. It is alleged that he would cover up their positive doping test results. Lamine Diack passed away in December 2021 at the age of 88, but not before spending time in a French prison. He was sentenced to four years however, was released early due to failing health.
The 57-year-old Papa Massata Diack was found guilty of skimming $15 million while his father was president, a position he heald for 16 years. It is also alleged that he took money from bids for World Athletics Championships, for example the 2019 Doha competition twice, once for the 2017 bid, which was turned down and again for the 2019 bid.
The younger Diack remains in Senegal where there is no extradition treaty between the two countries.
“Papa Massata Diack was sentenced more for his absence than for the offenses imputed to him,” his lawyer, Marie-Sophie Goldschmidt, told Reuters. “This decision is rather illogical.”
She maintains that the sentence is a “copy and paste,” of the original sentence.
He maintains that the charges against him and his late father are a conspiracy by the “Anglo-Saxons.”
