IAAF’s Ethics Board clears Coe

Russia’s deputy sports minister resigns Al-Mutairi comes 3rd in Brazil

LONDON, Oct 24, (Agencies): The IAAF’s Ethics Board has backed Sebastian Coe after the president of athletics’ governing body denied discussing rumours that Qatari officials had been paying bribes in a bid to secure hosting rights for the 2017 world championships.

The Board said on Monday it had found no evidence of bribery attempts or that International Association of Athletics Federations President (IAAF) Coe had been aware or disuccsed them.

It would not be opening a formal invesitgation into the process, which ended with London being selected as host city, he said.

Ed Warner, Chairman of UK Athletics, told BBC Radio in January that the night before the IAAF Council’s vote on the awarding of the 2017 championships in November 2011, he (as the head of the successful London bid team) was informed by a “senior person within the IAAF” of rumours that IAAF Council members were being called to receive “brown envelopes” containing cash from the Qatari delegation.

Warner repeated the claim in a British Parliamentary hearing and later told the Ethics Board that the senior person was Coe, who at the time was head of the 2012 Olympics and IAAF vice president

A statement issued by the Ethics Board on Monday said that Coe had told the board that he had “no recollection of hearing such a rumour or therefore of communicating it to Mr Warner”.

The Board contacted four witnesses and all members of the IAAF Council at the time, none of whom supported Warner’s claim.

Coe

A photo from the event. (KUNA) Kuwaiti car racer Nasser Al-Mutairi won the third place in the final round of the international drifting competition held in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte early Monday.

In a statement to KUNA, Al-Mutairi expressed his happiness over this achievement, adding that the competition included 154 racers of different nationalities.

Meanwhile, he said the tournament consisted of six rounds held in the UAE, moving to Malaysia, Thailand, Japan before concluding in Brazil.

Al-Mutairi also noted that he was the only Arab participant in the event. (KUNA)