RIO 2016 SCANDAL: IOC asks French investigators to keep it in the loop
KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: The International Olympic Committee has requested that French judicial authorities keep it up to speed on developments in the case being buult against former IOC veteran Lamine Diack.
The French prosecutor’s office played a key role in providing evidence and cause which led Brazilian federal police to raid 11 properties and arrest national Olympic supremo Carlos Arthur Nuzman yesterday in Rio de Janeiro.
Nuzman, millionaire businessman Arthur Cesar de Menezes Soares Filho (nicknamed ‘King Arthur’) and associate Eliane Calvacante face charges concerning allegations of vote-rigging in the IOC award to Rio of the 2016 Games in Copenhagen in October 2009.
Diack faces corruption charges in France following revelations of how some former world athletics officials connived at a Russian doping cover-up. The investigations led on to Rio vote-rigging suspicions.
A statement from the IOC has set out the Olympic body’s concerns to maintain a watching brief on the juidicial progress.
Formal statement
It said:
“This investigation by the Brazilian authorities is part of the broader ‘Lava Jato’ inquiry which has been underway in the country for some time. This is also linked to the ongoing investigation by the French prosecutor.
“The IOC has been in close contact with the French authorities since the beginning of their investigations into alleged bribery by a company belonging to Papa Massata Diack, son of the president of the IAAF at the time, Lamine Diack.
“The French prosecutor today announced that investigations revealed a ‘large scale system of corruption around Papa Massata Diack.’
“Papa Massata Diack, the then IAAF marketing adviser never held any position within the IOC and his father lost his IOC honorary membership following actions by the IOC in November 2015.
“The IOC is a ‘partie civile’ in the investigation by the French prosecutor, and the IOC’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer has asked for the IOC to be fully informed in a timely manner of all issues that may refer to Olympic matters.
“It remains in the highest interest of the IOC to protect the integrity of the candidature process and to address and sanction any infringements’. We await more details and cannot comment further at this stage’.”
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