The top two coaches in Egypt’s national weightlifting team have been sent to jail during a Government inquiry into widespread doping and misappropriation of public funds.
A number of elite weightlifters complained to the Ministry of Sport that technical director Mohamed Moussa and national coach Mohamed Hosni had been involved in the supply of illegal performance-enhancing drugs to team members.
The coaches are facing charges of embezzlement, wasting public money and forging official documents, according to news reports in Cairo, and have been accused by athletes of forging their signatures.
Moussa and Hosni were first sent to jail for four days on Sunday (December 29). The Public Prosecutor has since ordered that they be detained for a further 15 days while the inquiry continues. Mahmoud Magoub, President of the Egyptian Weightlifting Federation (EWF), who sits on the Executive Board of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), had been cleared of involvement in fraud but was still “subject to investigation” in the wide-ranging inquiry, reports said.
Magoub did not reply to messages sent by insidethegames.
Egypt is banned from international weightlifting for two-years because of multiple doping violations, many of them involving teenagers, and cannot compete at this year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The EWF – which also lost hosting rights to the 2020 IWF Junior World Championships – has been suspended by Egypt’s National Olympic Committee while the inquiry, led by Minister of Sport Ashraf Sobhi, in ongoing.