Russia says accusations of Putin’s role in doping ‘baffling’

Wada independent commission member Richard McLaren said: “He inserted his personal legal advisor Habib Cisse into the IAAF medical and anti doping department in November of 2011, with the London 2012 and Moscow 2013 Championships looming up”.

The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is baffled over how a report about the Russian track scandal could stop short of declaring track’s governing body noncompliant with the world’s anti-doping code.

ROC president Alexander Zhukov, who is also a senior Russian politician, says the mention of Putin in the report is “unsupported” by evidence and raises doubt over the commission’s other findings. The first report was presented in November 2015 and recommended a ban on Russian athletics for up-holding a state-supported doping system.

The report says that former president of the IAAF Lamine Diack “was responsible for organizing and enabling the conspiracy and corruption that took place in the IAAF”.

The report into IAAF governance was highly critical of Diack, who was in charge for 16 years.

“The allegations of corruption against the former leadership of the IAAF are so damning, and have shaken the credibility of the world federation to such an extent, that a sign of awakening must be an extraordinary membership meeting”, said German athletics chief Clemens Prokop in a statement on Friday.

Mr Pound said that he hopes his report will prompt other sports to reform before they face a similar crisis to athletics. Together with the lawyer, they formed a “powerful rogue group” that corrupted the IAAF from the inside and, working with then-IAAF anti-doping director Gabriel Dolle, the lawyer deliberately stalled the cases of suspected Russian dopers, the report said.

A World Anti-Doping Agency report said Thursday that corruption was “embedded” at the world athletics body piling pressure on its new leader Sebastian Coe.

Massata Diack, Cisse and Dolle are also under investigation in France along with Lamine Diack, who has been barred from leaving the country.

“There is an enormous amount of reputational recovery, and I can think of no one better than Lord Coe to lead that”, Pound said at the press conference that had Coe among the audience.

Coe has denied suggestions that he tried to influence Diack to award the event to Eugene. “Nor am I aware of any doping case that was not brought that should have been brought, or of any doping ban that was not published when it should have been published under the IAAF Rules”. That led the IAAF to suspend Russia’s track and field federation, leaving its athletes in danger of missing this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“The trust and confidence of all athletics” stakeholders, most notably athletes, administrators, federations and fans, has been exploited through the existence of what we now understand was an “informal illegitimate governance structure’ outside, but directly associated with the IAAF and its anti-doping unit”, he added.

She also said authorities had protectively seized 1.8 million euros held in a bank account identified as belonging to Balakhnichev, a former IAAF treasurer, adding: “Further inquires will be necessary to see what financial flows took place and their links”.