News

The Central Administration of the Investigative Committee continues investigating criminal cases opened against former director of the Anti-Doping Center (Moscow Antidoping Laboratory) Grigory Rodchenkov and people who served as managers at the NGO All-Russian Federation of Athletics (RusAthletics) suspected of a crime under Part 1 of Article 201 of the RF Penal Code (abuse of office).

Some new information on the details of the crimes is getting into light. The investigators have questioned some witnesses who confirmed that Rodchenkov was illegally selling prohibited drugs which could be used as doping. As was preliminarily revealed, he illegally purchased those drugs from USA and when selling them to his clients promised that he would conceal the doping in their samples. The investigators have reasons to think that Rodchenkov was not only a perpetrator, but a master-mind and organizer of a series of similar schemes.

In addition, the investigators have revealed the motives why Rodchenkov recycled the doping samples of Russian athletes though he had a letter from WADA. The investigators believe that he recycled the samples to hide the fact that he was dealing drugs and to avoid legal liability which is much tougher than responsibility for violating WADA standards applied to the personnel of laboratories and national anti-doping organizations certified by WADA.

The destruction of the samples damaged the image of the Russian Federation and made it impossible to know who among the athletes used drugs.

The investigators also initiated procedures to have Rodchenkov questioned in the United States about the crime and his motive.

Additionally, it is well known that Rodchenkov’s sister Marina Rodchenkov was convicted in 2012 of a crime under Part 3 of Article 234 of the RF Penal Code (illegal traffic in drugs which are not narcotics or psychotropic substances on a large scale) for selling drugs used as doping. Unfortunately, then the Federal Drug Control Service which ran the case was not able to find who she had bought the drugs from, so now the investigators are going to review those facts as well.

All these and some other questions the investigators are going to answer during the investigation of both cases. And it is quite possible that soon they will have more persons of interests to talk to.

Head of Media Relations                                                                                                                        V.I. Markin