Kenyan athletics chief Isaac Mwangi provisionally suspended by IAAF
Monday 22 February 2016 16:55, UK
The CEO of Athletics Kenya (AK) Isaac Mwangi has been provisionally suspended by the IAAF in the "interests of the integrity of the sport".
Mwangi was banned for 180 days pending investigation of a complaint made against him in relation to "potential subversion of the anti-doping control process in Kenya".
Last week, he requested 21 days' leave from his role pending investigations into claims he asked for a bribe to reduce the doping bans of two athletes.
According to reports in Kenya, Joy Sakari and Francisca Manunga said they were asked for around £15,000 to reduce the four-year bans they were given after testing positive at last year's World Championships.
Mwangi has strongly protested his innocence and says the allegations have caused him a lot of "mental anguish".
Three other high-ranking Kenyan athletics officials, David Okeyo, Isaiah Kiplagat and Joseph Kinyua, are currently under provisional suspensions by the IAAF having also been accused of subverting anti-doping processes.
The move to provisionally suspend Mwangi will heap more pressure on the embattled Kenyans, who still face the real possibility of being banned from the Rio Olympics.
African athletics chief Hamad Kalkaba Malboum said on Monday he did not support the total banning of Kenyan athletes from the Rio Olympics despite the recent doping scandal.
Kalkaba, who is also an IAAF vice-president, said they were willing to support the efforts being made by the Kenyan government to reach a solution to the doping issues.
"Africa does not have the laboratory to make those substances to give to the athletes; the doping substances. We don't have the scientific know how to do that," Klakaba, a Cameroonian, said in Nairobi.
"It happened before, we can mention the case of the United States with BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative), Marion Jones and others. They didn't ban the United States from any competition; we took sanctions against the athletes who made the wrong decisions.
"It happened with Canada, Ben Johnson and so on; we didn't take any decision against the country. If there are some athletes in Kenya into drugs, they could be sanctioned but I think there is no need for the world organization to ban all the athletes even the clean athletes. I consider that as a wrong view."
Kalkaba's comments come in the wake of last week's warning by IAAF president Sebastian Coe that Kenyan athletes could be banned from the Rio Olympics if the country was found to be non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Kenya has been given another two-month grace period to adopt the WADA code, after missing a February 14 deadline.
