The son of Lamine Diack, the president of the world governing body of athletics, demanded a personal payment of $5m in the course of Doha’s failed bid to win the right to host the 2017 world athletics championships, it can be revealed.
A cache of documents seen by the Guardian that lifts the lid on the affluent, sometimes chaotic rush to bring major sporting events to Qatar reveals Papa Massata Diack asked for the payment – $4.5m via bank transfer and $440,000 in cash to be collected in person in Doha – in October 2011. The email was sent at a time when the Qatar Olympic Committee had been lobbying his father, Lamine, to agree to change the dates for the 2017 world athletics championships and the 2020 Olympic Games, for which it was also bidding.
The request for payment also came around two months before the final presentations for the 2017 bid, in which Doha ultimately lost out to London. However, last month it returned to the table and succeeded in landing the world championships for 2019.
With the email requesting the payment and including his bank details, Diack included a letter of affirmation from the then IAAF commercial and marketing director, Luis Carulla, confirming that he has been sub-licensed the exclusive marketing rights for territories including Qatar. “Please find enclosed the IAAF letter of affirmation that QSI or ORYXQSI is asking. I do not owe it to them but to Your HH and yourself as only you know the role I play in this matter,” said Diack in the email. It is not clear whether the payment was ever made.
A spokesman for the IAAF said he had spoken to Papa Massata Diack and he had denied “receiving any such payment nor ever acting in such a manner on behalf of the IAAF”. In a statement in response to questions to the QOC, the Qatar Athletics Federation said it did not recognise the emails and insisted its more recent bid for the 2019 world championships was a legitimate one. “We are not aware of the email exchanges to which you refer. Our bid was conducted in a professional manner and complied with all rules and regulations,” said its general secretary, Mohammed al-Kuwari.
“We won the bid because our offer was ultimately the strongest, with compact, world-class facilities for athletes and visitors, as well as the opportunity for the sport to expand its horizons into a new part of the world.”
The emails seen by the Guardian cover a period from 2008 to 2011, during which Doha was in the process of bidding for the 2020 Olympics and Qatar controversially won the right to host the 2022 World Cup.
For the Olympic bid to succeed in being shortlisted, the approval of Diack for a proposal to shift the Games to late September was seen as vital to its chances of success.
Having failed with a bid for the 2016 Games and spent two years preparing the ground for a bid to host the 2020 Olympics with the International Olympic Committee, in February 2011 president Jacques Rogge wrote to the Doha bid team telling them to secure the agreement of the heads of the major international federations for the potential date change.
The QOC sent a number of messages to the to the IAAF via email and fax including on 10 May, 19 July and 26 July. Diack finally replied on 4 August and Diack Jnr wrote to the QOC shortly afterwards, enclosing a complete file of the correspondence.
The IAAF has confirmed that Lamine Diack provided the reassurance required over the date change in August 2011, days before the IOC deadline. He said that he was happy for the Games to take place in late September and early October.
But it said that his decision was based on the fact that the Sydney Olympics had taken place at a similar time of year and had not posed a problem.
Diack Jr is a divisive figure within the athletics world and has often been in the thick of the action when it comes to bidding for the world athletics championships, the politics of the IAAF and the sponsorship and broadcasting contracts that underpin the sport.
The bid team from Brisbane were left furious in 2007, when the rights to the 2011 world athletics championships went to Daegu and the 2013 edition went to Moscow. Diack was acting as a consultant to the Russian bid.
His company, Pazmodi Sports Marketing, also branched out beyond athletics and was one of those implicated during the summer in the scandal involving World Cup hospitality tickets in Brazil.
In 2002, Pazmodi was embroiled in a row with the Senegalese Football Federation that led to him being arrested and charged with embezzling public funds
He acts as an official adviser to the IAAF in emerging markets under agreement with its marketing partner, the Japanese firm Dentsu, and emails seen by the Guardian show him peppering the office of the QOC with suggestions for sponsorship deals.
The IAAF confirmed that Papa Massata Diack held the contract to exploit marketing opportunities in emerging markets including Brazil, Russia, India, China, UAE, Qatar, South Korea, Mexico, Africa and the Carribean. The contract was signed in 2007 and runs until 2015.
It also confirmed that he had a sub-licensing agrement with Dentsu that was signed in 2010.
Dentsu recently renewed its own marketing contract with the IAAF until 2029 in a deal believed to be worth £11m a year until 2019 and £14m per year thereafter.
Of the five world athletics championships during the current decade, four were awarded to cities in those emerging markets – Deagu in 2011, Moscow in 2013, Beijing in 2015 and Doha in 2019.
In its response, the IAAF praised Diack’s role in delivering new revenue streams, listing new deals with VTB Bank In Russia, Samsung in South Korea, Nirmal Lifestyle in India, CCTV 5 in China and the Abu Dhabi Sports Channel in the UAE.
It also said that an independent ethics committee was introduced in 2014 in order to handle any complaints about the sport.
The Doha bid for the 2017 world athletics championships ultimately lost out to London, despite a last ditch attempt to close the deal through a financial package worth a total of $236m.
But a similar tactic proved successful last month, when Doha won the right to the 2019 championships – to be held in late September – with a bid that also included a last minute “inducement” of $37m to be met by an as yet unnamed Qatari bank.
José Maria Odriozola, a Spanish IAAF executive, complained about the move. “All they have is money,” he said, after Doha beat rival bids from Barcelona and Eugene.
But the IAAF said no rules had been broken and offers to cover the prize money fund and deliver additional funding to the sport were encouraged.
The Doha bid for the 2020 Olympics fell at the shortlisting stage in 2012, much to the private fury of the bid team, amid concerns from US broadcasters over scheduling if the Games was moved to September or October.
An earlier bid for the 2016 Games had also fallen at the first hurdle but Qatar is widely expected to try again for the 2024 Olympics, either on its own or as part of a coalition of Gulf states.
The tenure of his 81-year-old father, who has been president of the IAAF since 1999 and has promised to stand down next year, has also been controversial. He was one of the non-football names included on a list of those bribed by the now defunct Swiss sports marketing agency ISL to the tune of $100m, which was leaked to the BBC. According to the list obtained by the programme, Diack received a total of $41,500 in three tranches. The Senegalese was admonished by the IOC, of which he is a member by virtue of his IAAF presidency, but claimed that the payment was a gift from friends after his house in Senegal burned down without insurance in 1993.
Lord Coe, the British Olympic Association chairman and former head of the London 2012 organising committee, last week announced that he planned to stand for the IAAF presidency next year. The Ukrainian Sergey Bubka, who like Coe is an IAAF vice-president, is widely expected to stand against him.
