Evidence unmasks systemic cover-up
Leaked documents reveal the outlandish lengths Russian officials went to in order to deceive investigators. Dana Johannsen reports.
On the surface it appears a mundane exchange between two work chums. Over the Moscow Laboratory’s internal messaging system, Evgeny Kudryavtsev, the head of the facility’s sample reception and storage department, is following up on the status of samples with a colleague.
The bosses have given them the hurry-up. ‘‘Nastya, GMR and TS asked . . . the aliquots should be released at our maximum speed. I am staying here, but you go home, it is already late.’’
‘‘OK, I understand,’’ came the reply, before later adding: ‘‘I am sorry, but I forgot to ask, obviously GMR is the director, but who is TS?’’
‘‘You surprise me! TS is Sobolevsky. And just in case, OM is Migachev,’’ responded Kudryavtsev.
It’s all very routine. All very dull. And all very made up.
The seemingly innocent conversation is among a tranche of messages the World AntiDoping Agency’s (Wada) investigations team considers its ‘‘smoking gun’’ – proof that staff at the Moscow Laboratory fabricated evidence.
The fictitious messages, which were inserted into the messaging platform within the laboratory information management system (LIMS), illustrate the outlandish lengths Russian officials went to in their ongoing corruption, as they sought to mislead investigators and withhold vital data from Wada.
Stuff has obtained a copy of the complete report compiled by Wada’s Intelligence and Investigations (I&I) department, which lays out in devastating forensic detail how authorities manipulated data, deleted tens of thousands of files and planted false evidence in the days and weeks after Russia was reinstated as a code compliant nation in September 2018, on the condition it would turn over its data to investigators.
Investigators say the value in the above exchange is the messages innocuously establish that references in the forum messages relate to the former director of the Moscow Lab, Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, and two other exemployees, Timofey Sobolevsky and Oleg Migachev, who resigned in late 2015 as the world was first learning of the existence of a statesponsored doping programme.
The other messages that were inserted into the system reveal more creative flair. They made reference to renovated apartments, holiday homes, and envelopes of cash.
The leaked I&I report concludes these fictitious messages were planted in an attempt to advance the Russian Intelligence claims that Rodchenkov and two co-conspirators were bad actors, who were falsifying records as part of a scheme to extort money from Russian athletes.
Rodchenkov, whose dramatic escape from Russia was detailed in Bryan Fogel’s awardwinning documentary Icarus, blew the whistle on Russia’s state-sanctioned doping programme. His evidence was a crucial pillar in understanding how Russian authorities managed to subvert the doping control process for years.
‘‘I propose we enlighten Kudryavtsev about our scheme involving the samples. We need to tell him straight and clearly that we are creating the appearance of dirty samples, and the athletes and their trainers are bringing us bonuses,’’ read one message, purported to have been sent from Rodchenkov in July, 2013.
In another fake exchange, Rodchenkov tells Sobolevsky not to report analysis results to the Anti-Doping Administration Management System (Adams), but rather wait for payment.
‘‘Wait a little,’’ says Rodchenkov. ‘‘They should be bringing it. Syrtzov is everything to us! . . . a renovated apartment and a summer house.’’
The falsified evidence was uncovered after investigators noted discrepancies in the messages between a copy of the LIMS database that had been provided to Wada by a whistleblower in October, 2017, and the copy investigators made of the system when it was finally granted access to the Moscow lab in January this year.
Other messages had been modified, with time stamps altered, while digital forensic experts identified 25 messages that were deleted. According to the I&I report, the disappearing messages were evidence of a conspiracy to protect Kudryavtsev, a key witness against Rodchenkov and his claims of state-sanctioned doping.
The investigators noted the ‘‘great effort’’ required by the perpetrators to carry out the deception. Among the 11,227 forum messages stored within the Moscow LIMS, those responsible were able to identify and delete 25 highly inculpatory messages.
The discovery left the Wada investigations team with little doubt as to what they were dealing with.
‘‘The fabricated, modified and deleted forum messages are a stunning deception. They are they figurative ‘smoking gun’. Moreover, their existence demonstrates intent and provides a lens through which the totality of manipulations within the Moscow Data should be observed.’’
It was the most stunning backdown ever witnessed in an international sporting boardroom. When the Wada executive committee voted 9-2 in favour of reinstating the Russian AntiDoping Agency (Rusada) as a code-compliant nation in September 2018, the response was that of near-universal contempt. Thirteen of the world’s most respected national anti-doping organisations, including Drug Free Sport NZ, released a joint statement expressing shock that ‘‘Wada’s leading compliance body is recommending the reinstatement of a country that perpetrated the worst doping system ever seen in international sport’’.
Russia had been cast into the international sporting wilderness since late 2015, when the first of a now lengthy series of investigations confirmed whistleblower accounts that Russian track and field athletes were being systematically doped and their positive drug tests covered up by anti-doping authorities.
A year later, after further evidence of a sportwide doping programme was revealed, Professor Richard McLaren released his full report into the Russian scandal.
McLaren’s 2016 report stated that one of the world’s largest sporting powers had cheated regularly, in virtually all Olympic sports, through a chain of command that led to the Russian minister of sport. The serial cheating included the brazen urine-swapping caper, as exposed by Rodchenkov and later corroborated by independent investigators, during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
For confidence to ever be restored in Russian
sport, the compliance committee laid out a strict set of conditions for re-entry, chief among them being that Wada was to be granted access to the raw data from the Moscow lab.
But throughout 2017 and 2018, Russian authorities repeatedly refused access to the lab data on the basis that it was effectively an active crime scene evidence in a criminal investigation against Rodchenkov.
They’d reached an impasse.
So the Wada compliance review committee came up with a new agreement – essentially that they’d reinstate Rusada on the condition that authorities would give Wada a forensic copy of its data by December 31, 2018.
The intent, according to a recap of events in the 26-page compliance review committee (CRC) report, which was also leaked to Stuff, was to give Russia a chance to demonstrate its commitment to the fight against doping by turning over information that would enable cheating athletes to be punished, and innocent athletes to be cleared of suspicion.
The repercussions of that decision are playing out now to a sombre tune of ‘‘I-told-you-sos’’. Russia never met that December 31 deadline. Instead the Wada team wasn’t granted access to the Moscow lab until January 10, 2019. Digital forensics would later reveal that in the weeks leading up to the arrival of investigators,
Russian authorities methodically deleted tens of thousands files and manipulated records.
Those responsible went to significant efforts to cover their tracks, including back-dating, diskformatting, deletions of database back-ups and secure-erasing of files.
With more than 23 terabytes of data recovered from the Moscow lab, it took painstaking work from digital forensic experts to uncover the tampering.
While investigators were able to uncover the deception, much of the vital data is now lost.
The key reason the I&I team had sought the data in the first place was to enable the punishment of athletes who had tested positive. Previous investigations and analysis of the LIMS database provided to Wada by a whistleblower in 2017 led investigators to identify 578 samples, collected from 298 athletes that were suspect. These athletes are referred to in documents as the ‘target group’.
However, to pursue these cases, further information was required – in particular the original test results.
According to the I&I report, between January 1 and January 9, 2019 – the day before investigators were due to enter the lab – 19,982 files were deleted from Moscow Laboratory computers. The deleted files contained the data Wada considered ‘‘most relevant’’.
The deception was so brazen that even as the three-person Wada team was entering the lab on January 10 and familiarising themselves with the specialist equipment needed to make forensic copies of the computer databases, a further 101 sequence files and 137 PDFs were deleted.
The net result of the tampering is devastating. The report concludes the manipulation has ‘‘materially prejudiced the ability to pursue’’ 145 of the 298 athletes identified in the target group.
The tampering did not stop there. When confronted with Wada’s initial findings in September this year, Russian officials doubled down and provided a new set of fraudulent data in an effort to explain away the discrepancies.
New data sources, which had not been previously made known to Wada, were provided to the I&I team by the Russian Minister for
Sport, Pavel Kolobkov, on October 23.
A forensic analysis of the servers and found once more that highly relevant data had been deleted before forensic copies were made, and other important files were also missing.
The continued attempts at deceit is a further aggravating factor in the case against Russia. Tomorrow the Wada executive committee will meet to consider these factors and to determine Russia’s fate.
The compliance committee has recommended a raft of measures including banning Russia from international sport for the next four years. Such a sanction would mean Russia will have no formal presence as a nation at next year’s Tokyo Olympics or the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. However, Russian athletes would be permitted to compete as ‘‘neutral’’ athletes.
To many in the international sports community, those sanctions don’t go far enough.
In the lead-up to tomorrow’s crunch meeting, Wada is facing mounting pressure from athlete representatives and sports leaders to impose a complete ban on Russian athletes.
For Russia to truly clean up its act, they argue, an unequivocal response is required.
The Wada executive, which is 50 per cent representatives of the International Olympic Committee, has a healthy track record of putting political and business interests ahead of those of clean athletes.
The lobbying over the past week can be viewed as an effort to ensure Wada president Sir Craig Reedie does not once again give Russia a free pass in the name of diplomacy.
Regardless of the punishment imposed, the story is unlikely to end there.
Given Russia’s continued denials and assertions that the Russian state is itself the victim of a criminal conspiracy orchestrated by a few bad actors, it is almost certain the sanctions will be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The legal manoeuvring will ensure the buildup to yet another Olympics will be overshadowed by what has become the biggest scandal in sports history.