A French court was on Wednesday jailed a former president of World Athletics, Lamine Diack, four years after been found guilty of corruption.
Diack was also ordered to pay a fine of €500,000 while two of the four year jail term were suspended.
The 87-year-old Senegalese led the World Athletics between 1999 and 2015. The body was then known as the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
He was dragged before the courts on corruption and money-laundering charges linked to the Russian doping scandal.
Diack was convicted of accepting bribes from athletes suspected of doping to cover-up test results so that Russia’s athletes could compete at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and the 2013 world championships in Moscow.
During the trial, prosecutors said Diack directly or indirectly solicited £3.1m from athletes to conceal their offences so they could continue competing.
The Senegalese was also said to have played a role in the payment of $1.5m from Russia to finance President Macky Sall’s campaign for the 2012 Senegal presidential election.
The money was in exchange for slowing down doping cases targeting Russian athletes, prosecutors said.
Diack has been under house arrest for the past two years, making it unclear if he would actually serve time.
William Bourdon, one of his defence lawyers, had urged the judges “not to take a decision that stops him from dying with dignity, surrounded by his loved ones, on his native land”.
Diack’s son Papa Massata Diack, who is accused of being at heart of the scheme and several others, refused to attend the trial in Paris.
They claimed the French court had no jurisdiction as the alleged crimes took place in Russia, Qatar, Senegal, Japan and Turkey.
