Coe under fire for corruption testimony
LONDON — Sebastian Coe, the Olympic champion who now runs track and field’s global governing body, has been accused of misleading a parliamentary investigation into sports doping and corruption.
Coe, beloved as an athlete in Britain and the leader of the 2012 Summer Games in London, ascended to the presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 2015. In a report published Monday, he faced blistering criticism over answers he gave to the group of British lawmakers about an extortion scheme run by officials, including his predecessor, which sought to blackmail Russian athletes who had failed drugs tests.
In a hearing and in written submissions to the digital, culture, media and sports committee, Coe said he had not been aware of specific allegations of corruption in Russian athletics before the scandal was first publicly exposed by a German television documentary in December 2014. At that time, he was vicepresident under IAAF president Lamine Diack.
However, the report details telephone and email contact between Coe and Dave Bedford, also a former middle-distance runner and the longtime director of the London Marathon. Bedford called Coe in August 2014 to tell him that Russian athlete Liliya Shobukhova had been forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover up a failed drug test that would have ruled her out of the 2012 London Olympics. Coe had also been the head of the organizing committee for the London Games.
Coe testified in front of the committee before details of the email emerged. He resisted a second meeting with lawmakers and, instead, provided a written response. He said he and Bedford had not discussed details of the plot during their phone call, and he forwarded the email to the IAAF’s ethics body without looking at its contents.
In its report, the committee stated “it stretched credibility to believe” that Coe was not aware of the allegations before they appeared in the media.
Coe’s “answers to us about this were misleading,” the committee report said. “Lord Coe may not have read the email and attachments sent to him by David Bedford, whose actions we commend, but it stretches credibility to believe that he was not aware, at least in general terms, of the main allegations that the ethics commission had been asked to investigate.
“It is certainly disappointing that Lord Coe did not take the opportunity, given to him by David Bedford, to make sure he was fully informed of the serious issues at stake in the Shobukhova case and their wider implications for the governance of the anti-doping rules at the IAAF.”
The IAAF said in a statement that it had instituted major changes to its governance structures since Coe’s appearance before the committee more than a year ago. The changes include the creation of an independent integrity unit, designed to limit the influence senior officials can wield when it comes to ethics decisions. The organization also said it would contact the committee to clarify “some of the more complex aspects of anti-doping that have been misunderstood.”
The committee said its findings are “matters of the greatest seriousness and affect the reputation of both the IAAF and Lord Coe.”