Papa Massata Diack is the son of Lamine Diack who for 16 years was the head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) now named World Athletics. Prior to that, he was the Mayor of Dakar and a world-class long jumper. At one point he was the coach of the Senegal national football team.
A good lesson for Reedie, Pound and Coe!! pic.twitter.com/gJOkqzMqw2
— DIACK Papa Massata (@PapaMassata) November 22, 2021
The elder was convicted of crimes to do with covering up Russian doping in exchange for large sums of money. He was sentenced to five years in jail, however, due to his age, 88, he was released from French prison to go home to Senegal. The question that the sporting world collectively wonders is, what other crimes was he involved in?
This is where his son Papa Massata Diack steps into the picture. Massata Diack was charged too. However, he claimed over Twitter that all charges against him have been dropped. The French tried to extradite Massata Diack, however, there is no extradition treaty between Senegal and France. Senegal refused to send him.
Papa Massata who worked in marketing for the IAAF has been accused of accepting bribes for applications to host world championships, specifically the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships.
Lamine Diack died on December 3 and with him is the truth about what he knows and what crimes he was involved in, potential extortion, bribery, coverups, influence pedalling, who knows. However, Massata Diack has been letting off steam lately, essentially over Twitter. Behind the veil of protection from Senegal, he can say pretty much all that he wants.
World Athletics nous parle de dopage au Kenya, en Éthiopie, au Maroc, en Biélorussie..etc. alors qu’ils ne balaient pas devant leur porte. Ils se foutent de notre gueule
— DIACK Papa Massata (@PapaMassata) November 9, 2021
Translation:
"World Athletics tells us about doping in Kenya, Ethiopia, Morocco, Belarus..etc. while they are not sweeping in front of their door. They don't care about us."
Follow @PapaMassata on Twitter to read many more ominous Tweets.
Is Papa Massata Diack, the son of the convicted criminal Lamine Diack, letting off steam or is he looking for an opportunity to blow the whistle on levels of corruption never before seen in World Athletics, the International Olympic Committee, and FIFA?
Sean Ingle wrote in the Irish Times, “The day Lamine Diack opens his mouth the IOC and Fifa will fall apart,” Papa Massata told me. “Because Lamine Diack knows a lot of secrets, on how the deals were cut to get a lot of the Olympic Games. He knows everything. He’s been the power broker. He was a force in the IOC for a long time.”
Randomly, it seemed, during one of his Twitter rants, Papa Massata Diack went after former marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe. He claimed that his father saved her from being exposed as a drug cheat and that she paid money for silence and coverup.
Radcliffe categorically denies his assertions, “Papa seems to have recently gone on this rant and I only realised over the weekend that he was doing so when I was dragged into it,” Radcliffe told Athletics Illustrated. “There is categorically zero basis for what he says regarding me, and I for one don’t believe a word he says about anything else either. I have no idea why he went after me either. I don’t want to comment since that only gives him what he wants. I certainly never paid those crooks for anything and he is also factually incorrect since I have lived in Monaco since 2005. The only reason I responded on Twitter was to stop his damaging lying statement being pushed on any further by people who don’t realise they are doing exactly what he wanted. It is just lies and deflection.”
Papa Massata has recently gone after the World Anti-Doping Agency, IOC, World Athletics, and FIFA. He has repeatedly named Sebastian Coe, current president of World Athletics, Nick Davies IAAF deputy secretary, Craig Reedie president of WADA, Günther Yunger, director of intelligence and investigations with WADA among others.
However, he has other detractors, for example, the Tokyo 2020 consulting firm that worked on the winning Olympic bid paid $370,000 to Massata Diack, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo.
During a media conference that he held in Dakar, in Sept. 2020 Massata Diack blamed the “Anglo Saxons” for his troubles. He was allegedly paid approximately $500,000 from the Doha committee. As news of the allegations spread, he sent a cease and desist letter from a New York-based law firm to several media outlets including Athletics Illustrated to keep this information from being published.
In Jan. 2020, in an apparent Hail Mary 11th-hour last-ditch effort to delay Lamine Diack’s trial in Paris, Massata Diack submitted documents that had postponed the case until June 2020. What, we wonder was in those documents?
The trial was delayed after prosecutors received the documents concerning testimony from the co-defendant.
They received three folders of notes, which apparently include testimony Papa Massata gave to investigators in Senegal hours before the start of the hearing.
The last-minute act postponed Diack’s eagerly-awaited trial, where he and advisor Habib Cisse and Gabriel Dolle, who is the former anti-doping chief at World Athletics.
Speculation could be made that perhaps Massata Diack had implicated other well-known people in the athletics community. And, we ask, what secrets did Lamine Diack take to the grave?
There will be more to come from this.
