A devastatingly critical World Anti-Doping Agency report accused Russia’s government of complicity in widespread doping and cover-ups by its track and field athletes – and the report has ensnared a lab that was to be used to test samples for the FIFA 2018 World Cup.
The WADA commission set up to investigate doping in Russia said even the country's intelligence service, the FSB, was involved, spying on Moscow's anti-doping lab, including during last year's Olympics in Sochi.
The commission chaired by Dick Pound recommended that WADA immediately declare the Russian athletics federation "non-compliant" with the global anti-doping code, and that the IAAF suspend the federation from competition.
"It's worse than we thought," Pound said. "It may be a residue of the old Soviet Union system."
Staff at Russia's anti-doping lab in Moscow believed their offices were bugged by the FSB and an FSB agent, thought to be Evgeniy Blotkin or Blokhin, regularly visited.
This was part of a wider pattern of "direct intimidation and interference by the Russian state with the Moscow laboratory operations," the report said.
Pound said Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko must also have known.
"It was not possible for him to be unaware of it," Pound said.
The commission report said the sports ministry issued direct orders to "manipulate particular samples."
Mutko, who is also a FIFA executive committee member and leads the 2018 World Cup organizing committee, denied wrongdoing to the WADA inquiry panel, including knowledge of athletes being blackmailed and FSB intelligence agents interfering in lab work.
The panel also raised suspicions that Russia may have has been using an obscure laboratory on the outskirts of Moscow to help cover up widespread doping, possibly by pre-screening athletes' doping samples and ditching those that test positive.
It said whistleblowers and confidential witnesses "corroborated that this second laboratory is involved in the destruction and the cover-up of what would otherwise be positive doping tests."
The WADA report also said Moscow testing laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov ordered 1,417 doping control samples to be destroyed to deny evidence for the inquiry.
