Athletics Kenya chief executive Isaac Mwangi has been provisionally suspended by the IAAF Ethics Board over a potential subversion of the anti-doping process.

Mwangi has been barred from holding any office within Athletics Kenya or the IAAF for a period of 180 days pending the outcome of the investigation.

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Last week, Mwangi 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 pr otested 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.

Last week Kenya missed a deadline to prove to the World Anti-Doping Agency it was doing enough to combat doping, and IAAF president Sebastian Coe refused to rule out the possibility of a ban.

Coe told the Clare Balding Show on BT Sport: "We know a disproportionate amount of reputational damage is caused by a relatively few countries and we have to be much more proactive.

"If it means pulling them out of world championships or Olympic Games then we will have to do that.

"I know the World Anti-Doping Agency has looked very closely at the Kenyan National Anti-Doping Agency. We, of course, monitor that through the IAAF, so that work is ongoing."