Why did Lord Coe sidestep the BBC’S 17 questions?
LORD Coe may not be as fast as he used to be but I still had to be quick on my toes to keep up with him as he strode purposefully through a Norwegian airport last week.
More than a week previously, I’d submitted 17 allegations and questions to Coe about his handling of the athletics corruption scandal and his IAAF presidential election to which answers came there none.
Two weeks before that I had requested an interview but was told by Coe’s communications director his time was so short he was only agreeing to interviews with those ‘most able to build trust in the sport’.
I presumed that meant he was only giving interviews to hacks he thought wouldn’t give him a hard time. Undeterred, I believed we had important questions that needed to be answered, so I caught up with Coe as he got off a plane in Stavanger.
The questions had arisen out of an investigation, in collaboration with Sportsmail’s Matt Lawton, I had been reporting on for BBC Panorama.
Our evidence suggested Coe had misled MPs at a Parliamentary Select Committee over what he knew and when about the unfolding Russian corruption scandal because we had learned he had been sent an email by former world record holder Dave Bedford containing the full allegations months before the scandal went public.
The allegations centred on a complaint concerning Liliya Shobukhova, the former London marathon winner, who was made to pay €450,000 to cover up her doping offences.
Panorama’s evidence also suggested Coe had been close to the man at the centre of the scandal, the former International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) president Lamine Diack’s son Papa Massata Diack. Could he explain this to me? Though unfailingly polite, he refused to answer a single question I put to him. This was disappointing, especially since it was Coe who said (to the same MPs) he would ‘die in a ditch’ for the media‘s right to scrutinise him. Not on this day, it seemed. Also, because text messages have emerged which suggest disgraced Papa Massata Diack, now banned from athletics for life, helped to secure votes for Coe’s election last year as president of the IAAF, among the questions I asked was: ‘Were you taking political campaign advice from Papa Diack while he was accused of serious corruption? Yes or no, Lord Coe.’ ‘Thank you,’ he answered. This polite confrontation did have the effect of provoking a response via a statement — which left more questions than answers.
He brushed away the suggestion Papa Diack helped him win the presidency, saying during election campaigns, he got lots of advice ‘some helpful, some not’.
However, the cache of texts obtained by Panorama between Lord Coe, his right-hand man Nick Davies and Papa Diack tell their own story. There are dozens, many of them fawning, some of then thanking him profusely for his ‘advice and friendship’. Lord Coe and Davies were also actively seeking meetings with him.
‘So good to have a proper chance to get things out in the open… Let’s speak regularly,’ Coe texted after their meeting in Beijing in April 2015. At this point, Coe is only too aware Papa Diack is under investigation for extorting athletes to cover up doping — he’d been forced to stand down publicly from the IAAF after a German TV documentary on corruption in December 2014.
They met in the Bahamas the following month, where Papa Diack claims he advised him on his campaign manifesto. They met again in Beijing in August that year — and he seems to want to keep Papa Diack close.
‘Hav (sic) a beer with us,’ Coe invited on August 15, four days before the election.
‘Seb is on full-on lobbying mode at the moment,’ Davies texted Papa Diack on the 17th, adding: ‘Seb is wondering when you might be free tonight...for a drink?’
‘Around 10-11pm, after reviewing issues with President!!’ Papa Diack answered. ‘Perfect. Seb will call you then,’ responded Davies.
COe’S rivalry for the presidency with Ukrainian ex-pole vaulter Sergey Bubka was much tighter than expected. The support of Africa was crucial and Coe’s team knew it.
‘Support of Africa confirmed (24/30)! Good luck!’ wrote Papa, the night before the election, a reference to how many nations he was sure were leaning towards the Coe camp.
In the end Coe won by just 23 votes. Papa Diack, who is now a fugitive from Interpol and banned for life by the IAAF ethics Commission, told me in Dakar where I went to interview him for last week’s Panorama: ‘If he had not the blessing of Lamine Diack or my support, he would have never been elected as the IAAF president, he knows that.’
Coe denies seeking Papa Diack’s help and said he had ‘tried to be civil, but wary’ with the campaign advice people were offering.
Now Coe faces a dramatic recall to the Culture, Media and Sport select committee for allegedly misleading MPs.
He maintained this was because although he had received Bedford’s email in which the London Marathon chief details corruption, extortion and bribery allegations he hadn’t opened Bedford’s email attachments.
He believed his role was to forward the email to the IAAF’s ethics commission which was investigating the matter.
This explanation was interesting, firstly because Bedford claims he had a conversation with Coe before he sent the email to give him the heads up.
And secondly, it was Bedford who helped get the corruption allegations to the ethics commission in the first place — five months before he sent them to Coe. Bedford, who then was the chairman of the IAAF road running commission, wasn’t sending it to his old friend to forward to the commission he already knew had the information — he was sending it to Coe because he thought he needed to know what was brewing in the federation Coe sought to lead.
At this point, in August 2014, Coe was IAAF vice-president and was preparing to announce his candidacy for president — didn’t he want to know what was going on inside his sport? Inside his own organisation, which had become riddled with the worst corruption modern sport has ever seen?
‘You may think this shows a lack of curiosity,’ his statement read. I sure would. Panorama’s is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.