Weah criticised for honouring Wenger
IAAF’s Bubka cleared by investigation into payment
Track and field’s main anti-corruption body says it has cleared IAAF Senior Vice-President Sergei Bubka after he was accused of making a suspicious money transfer.
French newspaper Le Monde reported last year that Bubka had transferred funds in 2009 to a company linked to then IAAF treasurer Valentin Balakhnichev, who was later banned from athletics for life over blackmail and corruption accusations.
The Athletics Integrity Unit says it “concluded, based on the information currently available to it, that there is no prima facie case (accepted as correct until proved otherwise) of a breach of the applicable IAAF rules”.
Bubka was an Olympic pole vault champion and world record holder before becoming a key player in sports politics. He is head of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee.
Liberian President and former football star George Weah is being criticised for his plan to award former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger the West African country’s highest honour.
Weah, who was elected president of his country last year, plans to honour Wenger and another French football coach, Claude Le Roy, at a ceremony tomorrow. They both played crucial roles in Weah’s career. Le Roy discovered Weah playing for a club in Cameroon in the late 1980s and recommended him to Wenger, then the coach of Monaco, in France. Wenger took the advice, signed the Liberian and Weah went on to play for Monaco, Paris SaintGermain and AC Milan, and became the first and still only African to win the FIFA World Player of the Year award in 1995.
Liberian Sports Minister D. Zeogar Wilson said Wenger is to be given the Humane Order of African Redemption with the rank of Knight Grand Commander. Wenger is expected to attend tomorrow’s ceremony.
But Darius Dillon, an opposition politician, criticised Weah on Wednesday for using the nation’s highest honour and the office of the president to recognise people who only played a role in his “personal life.”