No evidence of Ed Warner’s corruption claims –IAAF

Claims that the 2017 World Athletics Championships bidding process was corrupt will not be investigated further, the IAAF has said.

London will stage the event but in January UK Athletics chairman Ed Warner said a “senior person with the IAAF” had told him about Qatari bribes being offered during the bid process in 2011.

Warner told athletics’ world governing body that Lord Coe was the source.

Coe denies the claims and the IAAF says there is not “sufficient evidence”.

Coe – now IAAF president – says he has no recollection of hearing a rumour – or communicating one – that representatives of the Doha bid were offering “brown envelopes” of cash to IAAF council members in return for Qatari support, on the night before the bid.

Warner headed the bid team that won the 2017 vote in November 2011. Qatari capital Doha was subsequently named as host for the 2019 event in November 2014. Qatar has denied any wrongdoing in either bid.

Following Warner’s claims to BBC Radio 5 live’s Sportsweek programme, he gave the IAAF the names of three people he claimed were present when Coe told him of Qatari wrongdoing and the body’s ethics board made contact with those named and all members of the IAAF Council at the time.

In a statement, the ethics board said: “To date, none of the respondents have had any relevant evidence corroborative of Mr. Warner’s recollection or relevant to the alleged factual matters the subject of the purported rumour.”

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