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WADA Denies Donations From Vaud Where Investigator Was Lead Prosecutor Add Up To Lack Of Independence

Craig Lord 2024-04-27 No comments Reading Time: 7 minutes

The China Files from ARD - SOS Analysis - images courtesy of ARD, stills from the documentary of the New China Crisis In Sport

Eric Cottier, the independent prosecutor appointed by WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, to investigate the go-free 23 Chinese swimming doping positives, spent his career working as a leading Swiss prospector in the canton of Vaud, a region that is home to the IOC and Olympic sports federations, including World Aquatics, and donates to the global clean-sport gatekeeper.

Cottier’s appointment has been criticised by WADA as lacking the independence claimed as a result of the prosecutor’s close links with a Vaud judicial system with significant connections to legal processes within Olympic sport.

Those include work on such cases as that of Paolo Barelli and his fight to clear his name in the face of alleged financial irregularities at LEN, since rebranded European Aquatics, during his years as the president of the continental federation. affiliated to and intrinsically joined at the executive hip to World Aquatics.

Vaud is home of Lausanne and the headquarters of the IOC, World Aquatics and many other sports organisations, while Nyon in the same canton is home to European Aquatics.

USADA boss Travis Tygart said that Wada had “cherrypicked [an] attorney from its own back yard”.

“By calling this an ‘independent’ investigation, Wada leadership is trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” he said in a statement that called for the appointment of more independent entities, aspects and a neutral athlete representative to assist in the investigation commission by WADA and announced on Thursday.

Vaud also hosts the annual WADA Symposium and documents seen by The Times show that the region has been a regular donor to WADA, with $135,000 given between 2002 and 2021, the paper reports this evening.

In response to questions from journalist Matt Lawton, WADA denied that any of that impacted Cottier’s independence, saying: “This plainly does not cast any doubt on Mr Cottier’s independence and impartiality in this matter. Wada receives contributions from almost every government in the world, as well as additional contributions from many.”

It also noted that “a public prosecutor is part of the justice branch of government which, by design, is totally independent of the executive branch, which would have approved the contribution to WADA.”

Its annual symposium lists Lausanne, Vaud and Switzerland as partners, while the $1million WADA recently received from China, the IOC matching the amount, was allocated to science and research and investigations.

The 2012 Revelations of Dr. Xue – Case Closed With No Action in November 2020

Xue Yinxian - Courtesy of ARD China Files, screenshot — Xue Yinxian – Courtesy of ARD China Files, screenshot

The Times also reports other documents showing that WADA, up to the eve of the mass positives in the case of the go-free 23, was investigating claims of widespread use of trimetazidine (TMZ), the hart booster than landed Sun Yang* and Kamila Valieva*, among many in between, suspensions in 2014 and 2024 respectively; same performance-enhancing heart drug at the centre of the scandal.

Up until November 2020, less than a month after the 4x100m mixed medley relay world record was broken by a China team that included three of those who would test positive for TMZ in competition from January 1-3, 2023, WADA had been investigating the 2012 claims of Dr Xue Yinxian she repeated in a 2017 documentary by the same ARD German TV doping unit that investigated the go-free 23 cases and last Sunday evening revealed alarming behind-the-scenes details of events kept from the public domain for the past three years.

Dr. Xue fled China and spoke of a state-sponsored doping programme dating back decades and involving thousands of athletes. Some of that came as no surprise: the list of doping positives in the 1990s extended to more than 100 in swimming alone, most of the cases involving steroids, human growth hormone and diuretics given to underage teen-age girls. The cases resulted in suspensions for the young athletes and some of their coaches.

Kinder (child) doping is a crime in Germany, where laws made the statute books ahead of the 1998-2000 doping trials at which doctors and coaches were among those called to account for their role in the State Research Plan 14:25 systematic doping program that had its biggest impact in women’s sports such as swimming, rowing and track and field in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tips From USADA To WADA

USADA noted this week that its tips to WADA included names of swimmers among the go-free 23. It said that there were “gaps in the testing of these swimmers, allowing the athletes to avoid positive tests”.

That referred to the timing of events in late 2020: in September, October and November, swimmers were tested on a regular basis but in December, in the period that included a training camp in the same place as the January 1-3 2021 competition that would result in the 28 positive tests among 23 swimmers, the level of testing dropped dramatically.

Respected leaders in the field of toxicology and pharmacology who have served as anti-doping expert witnesses in court cases told ARD that the low concentrations of TMZ WADA said had occurred in some of the swimmers could reflect ingestion several weeks earlier.

WADA, however, accepted the world of Chinada and the Chinese state security agents who are said to have inspected the hotel kitchen that is alleged to have been at the heart of a mass contamination event, two months after the competition at the start of 2021, half a year out from the Tokyo Olympic Games.

In November, on the eve of the fall-off in numbers of Chinese swimmers being called on to provide out-of-competition test samples for analysis, WADA informed its foundation board that the “China investigation” was closed “… with no follow up actions,” barring a rider that noted, The Times reports: “Only should substantive new information or evidence be presented would the case be reopened.”

Less than two months later, 23 swimmers, including some who were on watch in the “China investigation”, returned 28 positive tests for TMZ.

The foundation board and executive committee of WADA were informed about all matters until the November report but not about the go-free 23 positives in 2021.

Rob Koehler, director general of Global Athlete and former deputy director general of WADA, told Lawton that the lack of reporting upwards “bizarre” .

Sun Yang, The 2014 TMZ & The 2018 Long Night That Led To WADA Appeal

WADA told The Times that it reviews some 2,500 to 3,000 cases as a Wada management function that does not have to be reported to the executive committee, which is informed of cases that the gatekeeper decides to appeal, such as Sun Yang in 2019 after this author revealed the alarming details of a secret FINA Doping Panel report in The Sunday Times.

Sun Yang walks past a FINA banner at the 2017 World Championships - by Patrick B. Kraemer — Sun Yang walks past a FINA banner at the 2017 World Championships – by Patrick B. Kraemer

China’s star swimmer had had a dispute with an out-of-competition testing team that lasted through the night and ended after Sun had removed a blood sample from the chain of command and then watched as a security guard took a hammer and smashed the outer casing of the sample container on the pavement outside building near Sun’s home that was being used as the test centre.

WADA appealed a decision by FINA not to impose no penalty after it slammed Sun and his entourage in the report and judged him to have put “his entire career” at risk before opting to give him no more than a warning despite his history of a doping positive for TMZ in 2014.

The WADA appeal led to Sun being suspended for four years and three months through the the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

His 2014 doping case led to a lenient three-month retrospective suspensions that was never actually served as time out of the sport and all professional programs. At the 2016 Olympics, Sun was greeted to booing from the stands as he walked out to races in unprecedented scenes in the pool at an Olympic Games.

Swimmers Mack Horton, Australia, and Duncan Scott, Britain, staged silent protests by refusing to stand with Sun Yang for podium photos when the Chinese swimmer claimed the 200m and 400m World titles in 2019 at a time when the WADA appeal against him being allowed to swim on was pending.

In the past week, swimmers have expressed their anger, disappointment and even “heartbreak” over WADA’s decisions on the go-free 23.

In his last interview before final preparations for Paris 2024, Adam Peaty said: “It isn’t necessarily about the country but as an athlete we all want to be treated fairly and with full transparency and making sure that in those cases those results are not hidden and put under secrecy. That’s where I stand on it and I think a lot of swimmers are very disappointed in WADA.”

Peaty backed a statement in which Aquatics GB in which the federation called on WADA to think again because “the potential loss of trust and reputational damage to Sport is significant” and said he did not want “to be in a position where [his opinion is] too fluid and lacking guts.”

Melvin Imoudu, who claimed the German 100m breaststroke title in Berlin to book a ticket to Paris 2024, where he will face Peaty and one of those among the go-free 23, World champion Qin Haiyang, was asked for his thoughts by German media. He said:

Melvin Imoudu, courtesy of ARD Sportschau

“This is of course a complete breach of trust. It’s completely incomprehensible to me why no action was taken. We are always told: be careful what you eat. Watch what you eat. Always make sure that there can be nothing in there – because even if you are not to blame for what is in there, you will first be blocked and an investigation will be carried out. And then it’s just thrown under the table. As long as there’s no clarification, these athletes should be banned first, as harsh as that sounds.”
Melvin Imoudu

Despite such robust response on many occasions, WADA now stands accused of accepting the word of a state security machine at a time of pandemic when it was supposedly impossible for WADA investigators to enter China swiftly and conduct an inquiry into the 23 swimmers on the ground.

WADA, which did not inform the IOC about the 23 cases, either, maintains that it has no obligation in the rules to report positives determined to have been matters of “no fault” in which the athlete cannot be expected to meet the burden of proof when it comes to how a banned substance got into the bloodstream.

According to WADA, the 23 positives entered the Adams database in mid-March 2021, around the time the Ministry of Public Security sent agents into the swimming team hotel kitchen to test for TMZ. Traces are said to have been found in a spice container, extractors fans and trash cans, as well as the drains running from the kitchen.

The report of its findings and Chinada’s decision to let the 23 swimmers go free arrived with WADA in mid-June 2021, a month before the start of the Tokyo Olympics and a month after China’s Olympic trials in the pool.

Chinada had decided to accept that the swimmers had “inadvertently” tested positive for TMZ “through contamination”.