World athletics chief Sebastian Coe yesterday came under more pressure with a senior British lawmaker labelling his attitude to devastating allegations in an e-mail as “very, very disturbing.”
Coe was yesterday due to deliver an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decision on whether to lift a ban on Russia over widespread doping violations so its track and field contenders can compete at the Rio Olympics.
However, the 59-year-old two-time Olympic champion is in the dock after a BBC documentary claimed he enlisted the help of the fugitive son of disgraced former IAAF president Lamine Diack for his successful election campaign last year.
It said Coe might also have misled a British parliamentary committee on why as an IAAF vice-president he did not do more to raise the issue of the Russian scandal.
In December last year, Coe told the British House of Commons’ Committee for Culture, Media and Sport that he had not been aware of specific allegations until a December 2014 German television documentary. When it was shown, Coe controversially described the program “a declaration of war” on the sport.
However, the BBC and British newspaper the Daily Mail say they have evidence Coe knew four months before the program as he had received an e-mail about the corruption. The British media said the e-mail included an attachment which outlined the level of corruption involving Diack Jr and the blackmailing of a Russian marathon runner.
Coe has said he did not read the attachment and passed it on to the IAAF Ethics Committee.
Diack Jr is wanted by France for fraud and money laundering charges. His father is already under house arrest in France facing charges.
Jesse Norman, a Conservative lawmaker and chairman of the parliamentary committee, told the BBC yesterday that Coe would almost certainly be recalled to explain his actions.
“I’d say it’s almost certain we’ll want to have Lord Coe back in front of the committee,” Norman said. “I don’t want to get too far ahead of where the committee is going to be, but these are very serious matters. The idea he received this e-mail and, as I understand from his account, not have opened it having been associated with the IAAF in a senior position at that point for six years, and aware of the possibility of individual cases of dishonesty and corruption, is very, very disturbing.”
Norman was himself embroiled in controversy last year when he appeared to imply British athletics icon Paula Radcliffe had been a drugs cheat.
The lawmaker did not go as far as fellow committee member Damian Collins, who had said Coe should resign if he did not come up with a convincing response to the claim he misled them.
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