IAAF council member banned for life
IAAF Council member David Okeyo of Kenya was banned from track and field for life yesterday for his role in diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars of sponsorship money from Nike for his and others’ personal use.
It was another case pointing to deep-rooted graft in the sport in Kenya, which has been the most successful distance-running nation in the world for decades, but is seeing that reputation eroded by a series of doping and corruption scandals.
Those scandals have swept across the Kenyan terrain over the last few years, implicating in various cases athletes, coaches, and agents right up to the most senior officials.
Okeyo, the former secretary general and a vice-president of the Kenyan track federation, is also facing charges of extorting money from athletes in a separate IAAF ethics case that has links to the East African country’s doping crisis.
In the Nike money case, evidence indicated that two other high-ranking officials at the Kenyan federation were also involved in funnelling off cash. They were former Athletics Kenya (AK) president Isaiah Kiplagat, once a long-serving IAAF Council member himself, and former AK treasurer Joseph Kinyua.
ESCAPED PUNISHMENT
Kiplagat died in 2016 before he could face charges and Kinyua, although investigators found he was also involved, escaped punishment because he was not bound by the IAAF’s code of ethics at the time of the offences.
Okeyo was, however, guilty of breaching the IAAF’s ethics code on 10 occasions and “over a long period of time,” a three-member IAAF ethics panel said in its written decision. Okeyo’s wrongdoing started as far back as 2004, the panel found.
As well as his life ban, Okeyo was fined US$50,000 (just under J$7 million), which he was ordered to pay to AK. He was ordered to pay another US$100,000 (about J$14 million) in legal costs to the IAAF. He was also formally expelled as an IAAF Council member. He had been suspended from his roles since 2015.
The decision was announced by the IAAF ethics board following a three-year investigation and a hearing in Nairobi in January and February.