Thursday 14 January 2016 21:21, UK
The IAAF Council, including the organisation's current president Lord Coe, "could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics" according to an independent commission report from the World Anti-Doping Agency.
But former WADA chief Dick Pound - who put the damning report together following an investigation into doping in Russian athletics and the behaviour of the IAAF - gave his unequivocal backing to Coe, insisting he was the right man to restore the battered reputation of athletics' governing body.
Pound said: "We were careful to point out that the Council could not have been unaware of the situation and we hold to that. But as far as the ability of Lord Coe to remain at the head of the IAAF...it's a fabulous opportunity for the IAAF to seize this opportunity, under strong leadership, to move forwards.
"It is an enormous amount of reputational recovery that has to occur here. And I can't think of anyone better than Lord Coe to lead that."
Lord Coe sat on the council from 2007 and was elected IAAF president in September last year. He was sat with the world's media in the Munich hotel where the report was released by Pound on Thursday afternoon.
The report will nevertheless put renewed pressure on the athletics great, who has faced criticism since he took over from Lamine Diack.
The second report compiled by an independent commission of WADA into the Russian doping scandal said Coe's right-hand man, Nick Davies - who stepped down as his chief of staff last month - was "well aware of Russian 'skeletons' in the cupboard".
Diack himself comes under severe criticism, and the report was released just a couple of hours after Interpol issued a 'red notice' for the arrest of his son Papa Massata Diack on charges of corruption and money-laundering.
Diack Sr faces criminal charges in France over allegations that he took around £760,000 from Russian athletes and officials to cover up failed drug tests.
The report states: "The IAAF Council could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics and the non-enforcement of applicable anti-doping rules.
"There was an evident lack of political appetite within the IAAF to confront Russia with the full extent of its known and suspected doping activities."
Diack, the report states, was "responsible for organising and enabling the conspiracy and corruption that took place in the IAAF."
Diack sanctioned and appeared to have had personal knowledge of the fraud and the extortion of athletes carried out by the actions of the illegitimate governance structure he put in place, the report concludes.
But the report says that the blame cannot be attached to Diack, who ran the IAAF for 16 years, alone and that the malaise was much wider.
It adds: "Failure to have addressed such governance issues is an IAAF failure that cannot be blamed on a small group on miscreants. The opportunity existed for the IAAF to have addressed governance issues. No advantage was taken of that opportunity."
Coe insisted on Wednesday there had been no cover-up, and had no intention of standing down.
In terms of Davies, the report states he did not mention any knowledge of the delays in reporting doping violations when he was interviewed by the commission in June. A subsequent leaked email from him to Papa Massata Diack showed Davies discussing a plan to delay the announcement of positive tests by Russian athletes.
