A 2012 photo of Russia’s gold medalist Mariya Savinova (left) celebrating with bronze victor Ekaterina Poistogova (right), and coach Vladimir Kazarin at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
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He said: “We were taken unaware too – there were a few nasty surprises”.
Mutko is also an executive committee member with the Federation Internationale de Football Association world governing body for soccer and head of the 2018 World Cup organizing committee for soccer’s next men’s global tournament.
Systemic failures A number of Russian athletes suspected of doping could have been prevented from competing in 2012 had it not been for “the collective and inexplicable laissez-faire policy” adopted by the IAAF and the Russian federation.
“It’s pretty disturbing”, Pound said.
“What made these allegations even more egregious was the knowledge that the government of the Russian Federation provides direct funding and oversight for the above institutions, thus suggesting that the federal government was not only complicit in the collusion, but that it was effectively a state-sponsored regime”, said the report.
“It’s worse than we thought”, said Pound, speaking at a press conference in Switzerland just nine months before the Summer Olympics are set to take place in Brazil.
“As part of the inquiry, French police last week raided premises belonging to individuals and companies”. His son Papa Massata Diack and three others have also been charged with alleged breaches of the IAAF’s Code of Ethics. He has yet to comment.
Coe – whose predecessor Lamine Diack is being investigated over an alleged payment of more than one million euros to cover up doping offences by Russian athletes – has described these as being “dark days” for athletics which he was determined to guide the sport through, down the “long road to redemption”. “In regards to the abjection of doping test samples, it was WADA’s initiative”.
During its investigation the commission had requested assistance from Interpol’s anti-doping unit to contact national law enforcement agencies in countries where possible infractions had occurred, Interpol said.
Pound said the doping could be called state-sponsored.
“That is your nuclear weapon. The idea is not to exclude people from the Olympics.” he added.
“It’s a pretty damning indictment of what has not been done and points the way to things that can be done if we’re going to get serious about this”.
The report also said that members of Russian law enforcement agencies were present in the Moscow lab and involved in the efforts to interfere with the integrity of the samples, creating “an atmostphere of intimidation” on lab processes and staff members. Russian Federation had far more drug violations than any other country in 2013: 225, or 12 per cent of all violations globally, according to Wada data.
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The investigators have also out-lined incidents of doping tests that were deliberately destroyed, e-mails accounts that were targeted for cyber penetration and of Russian security agents masquerading as technicians in a WADA accredited laboratory.
