Explosive memo to KGB claims IOC ‘did not want drug samples retested... to avoid scandals’
RUSSIA wanted to use state security agents from the former KGB to attempt to influence key international figures in the antidoping movement to prevent their systematic drug taking from being exposed.
A memo drawn up in January 2015 by whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov reveals the concerns Russian authorities had that they were about to be exposed as serial cheats in reports commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Rodchenkov wrote to Russia’s state security operatives, the FSB — the successors to the KGB — outlining the problems which would result from a call to retest stored doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2012 London Olympics, which would result in Russian Olympians being exposed. The memo suggests that:
Rodchenkov believed that neither the International Olympic Committee nor the International Association of Athletics Federations wanted the samples retested as they wanted to avoid ‘scandals’.
The ‘West’ had known about Russian doping for years and tried to ‘smooth over the situation amicably’ and ‘politely tolerated it’.
Martial Saugy, who now advises FIFA on anti-doping but was then head of the renowned laboratory in Lausanne which would work on the IOC and IAAF re-testing programme, was ‘well related to Russia’.
FSB agents might be able to discover when the retesting programme would start and who would be targeted.
Rodchenkov wrote the memo after former WADA president Dick Pound had started investigating claims of corruption in Russian sport, his report having been commissioned following The
Mail on Sunday’s expose in 2013 on the corruption of Rodchenkov’s laboratory in Moscow and a TV documentary by ARD in Germany. It led to a call for samples stored in Lausanne to be retested.
In a translation of the memo, which was made available to Richard McLaren’s WADA Independent Commission but was not included in the final version, Rodchenkov writes: ‘Of particular danger are those samples from the last Olympics stored in the laboratory at the University of Lausanne. If you now reanalysed Beijing samples — it will be a disaster...’
Rodchenkov comes up with a series of proposals. He writes: ‘Suggestion: start working with Lausanne lab. Martial Saugy is still working as director and is very well related to Russia.’
Last week, Saugy emailed to say: ‘I am not in a position to make any comment on an ongoing investigation, where I can be called as a witness.’
Rodchenkov also indicates Russian authorities have friends in the ‘West’ who have known about and tolerated Russian doping. He claims former IAAF treasurer Valentin Balakhnichev had been warned. Rodchenkov writes: ‘Westerners have tried to smooth over the situation amicably and confidentially warned Balakhnichev for many years and politely tolerated it.’
Since the memo was written, ex-IAAF president Lamine Diack has been banned for life in relation to bribes paid to cover up Russian doping and been replaced by Lord Coe.
The IAAF said: ‘We take these allegations seriously. We will work closely with the ongoing investigation into members of the former IAAF regime and the anti-doping processes. The system failed every athlete.’
The IAAF has suspended Russia and initiated 116 doping cases against Russian athletes and coaches, and is working with the IOC to identify further samples for reanalysis.
The Lausanne laboratory did not wish to comment.