Diack’s corruption, covering up Russian doping cases for bribes, was discovered after police raided a Paris hotel
The unmasking of Lamine Diack as one of the great sinners in the history of sport began with a police raid on All Saints’ Day in 2015. At this point Diack, the head of global athletics for 16 years and a distinguished figure at the International Olympic Committee, had yet to be implicated in a growing scandal involving the Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova, who had secretly paid €450,000 to senior figures at the International Association of Athletics Federations to hide a doping ban.
But everything changed on that unseasonably warm November day. When police arrested Diack in his room at the Sheraton hotel at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, they also uncovered his computer, which housed a treasure trove of secrets. And nearly five years later it has finally led to Diack – along with five other former senior figures at athletics’ governing body – being convicted of corruption.
