France has issued arrest warrants for two former senior Russian athletics officials in an investigation into a doping cover-up, reports Sport24.
The two men targeted are Valentin Balakhnichev, the former head of Russian athletics who was also treasurer of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), and Alexei Melnikov, a former Russian national team coach.
In the same probe, French investigating magistrates issued a warrant in 2017 for Papa Massata Diack, son of former IAAF president Lamine Diack.
Lamine Diack was charged* at the time with taking millions of dollars to cover up failed Russian doping tests along with two other IAAF officials.
His son, a marketing consultant widely known as PMD, has been on Interpol's most wanted list since December 2015 but is sheltering in Dakar as the Senegalese government refuses to extradite him to France.
Diack senior was in charge of world athletics from 1999 until he was arrested in France in 2015.
French investigating magistrates charged* him for a second time in June last year, accusing him of allowing his son to "appropriate IAAF receipts from sponsors" including Samsung, Chinese TV channel CCTV, Chinese energy firm Sinopec, Russian bank VTB and the Abu Dhabi Corporation, according to information about the hearing received by AFP.
France has undertaken the investigation because it believes some of the funds were laundered in France.
Read more of this AFP report published by Sport24.
*The term "charged" in this AFP report refers to being "placed under investigation" under French law (or "mise en examen") which implies that a magistrate - not the police - has found there is compelling and/or concordant evidence of a person having committed a crime. It is not strictly equivalent to a "charge" (in French "inculpation") which is only brought if and when an investigation closes with the parties in question being sent for trial. In its reports, Mediapart uses the term "placed under investigation", which is the closest to the French legal definition.