World athletics chief Lamine Diack received a warning and African soccer boss Issa Hayatou was reprimanded by the International Olympic Committee Thursday for receiving payments from a defunct firm at the heart of a corruption affair. Joao Havelange, president of world soccer governing body FIFA from 1974-1998 and an IOC member for 48 years, resigned days ago with the IOC shelving a probe into the 95-year-old's alleged links with FIFA's former marketing agency International Sport and Leisure (ISL). Diack and Hayatou admitted to the IOC's ethics commission they had received payments from ISL in 1993 and 1995 respectively but those did not constitute a bribe, the IOC said in its decision. ISL went bankrupt in 2001 with debts of around $300 million. Neither Diack nor Hayatou were IOC members at the time and the decision Thursday does not affect their duties or rights within the IOC. “The IOC has proven that it respects its own rules, (it has) high respect of ethical behaviour and we will not hesitate to act when evidence is brought to us,” IOC president Jacques Rogge told reporters. “The wider world would agree... that the IOC means business and that the IOC is accountable and transparent,” Rogge added. IOC documents showed Senegal's Diack told the IOC he had received three payments totalling $30,000 as well as 30,000 French francs from ISL “in order to meet the costs caused by a fire at his house that started on March 13 1993”. Cameroon's Hayatou said he had received 100,000 French francs from ISL in 1995 for the 40th anniversary of the African Football Confederation (CAF). Diack was an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) vice president at the time he received the payments while Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Hayatou, an IOC member since 2001, was already a FIFA Executive Board member in 1995. The last IOC member to be reprimanded was International Ice Hockey Federation boss Rene Fasel, who in 2010 was found to have breached ethics rules in a case involving the federation's broadcasting rights.
