Monday, November 9, 2015

Russia accused of widespread doping, cover-ups in damning report

World Anti-Doping Agency says country should be banned from competition until it cleans up its act

November 9, 2015 9:36AM ET Updated 12:58PM ET

In a devastatingly critical report, a World Anti-Doping Agency panel accused the Russian government Monday of complicity in widespread doping and cover-ups by its track and field athletes and said they should all be banned from competition until the country cleans up its act.

The report from a WADA commission that has been probing media allegations of widespread doping and deception in Russia — host of soccer's next World Cup — said even the country's intelligence service, the FSB, was involved, spying on Moscow's anti-doping lab, including during last year's Winter Olympics in Sochi.

The commission chaired by Dick Pound recommended that WADA immediately declare the Russian federation “non-compliant” with the global anti-doping code, and that the International Association of Athletics Federations should suspend the federation from competition.

It also said the International Olympic Committee should not accept any entries from the Russian federation until the body has been declared compliant with the code and the suspension has been lifted. Such a decision could keep Russian athletes out of next year's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Sebastian Coe, the head of the International Association of Athletics Federations, said he had given the Russian athletics federation until the end of the week to respond to a report into alleged widespread doping in the country that could lead to their suspension from the Olympic Games.

"I will seek an explanation for the allegations and the (IAAF) Council will then make a judgment," Coe told journalists.

The IAAF Council has the power to act on the recommendations and ban Russia from sanctioned events, including next year's Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the 2017 world championships in London.

The WADA commission also accused the Russian state of complicity. It said its monthslong probe found no written evidence of government involvement but it added: “It would be naive in the extreme to conclude that activities on the scale discovered could have occurred without the explicit or tacit approval of Russian governmental authorities.”

The report said agents from the FSB even infiltrated Russia's anti-doping work at the Sochi Olympics. One witness told the inquiry that “in Sochi, we had some guys pretending to be engineers in the lab but actually they were from the federal security service.”

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 Mutko 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 WADA report also said Moscow testing laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov ordered 1,417 doping control samples destroyed to deny evidence for the inquiry.

It said Rodchenkov “personally instructed and authorized” the destruction of evidence three days before a WADA audit team arrived in Moscow last December.

The WADA panel said it wanted to send the Russian athletes' samples to labs in other countries to detect banned drugs and doping methods.

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.”

Germany said Friday that asylum seekers would only be able to enter the country at five points along its border with Austria to better control a mass influx.

"We would like to have a more orderly procedure," a spokeswoman for the interior ministry told AFP, saying Germany had reached agreement on the new policy with the Austrian government.

"The rule will go into effect immediately," she added.

Tempers flared between Berlin and Vienna this week when Germany's Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere on Wednesday hit out at Austria for sending asylum seekers to its 800-kilometre-long (500-mile-long) border without any warning.

Authorities in the southern German state of Bavaria, already struggling to cope with the record numbers, complained that the lack of coordination was leaving them scrambling to find resources to assist the new arrivals.

But Austrian authorities hit back, with a police spokesman calling it "a joke" that Bavaria was unable to process the new arrivals.

Three million more migrants expected to reach EU by 2017

The European Union is predicting that three million migrants could arrive in the 28-nation bloc by the end of next year, with the refugee emergency already proving a stern test of EU border and reception capacities.

More than 700,000 people have come to Europe seeking sanctuary or jobs so far this year.

The arrivals are imposing costs for shelter, rescue operations and border security, but the EUestimates that the refugees are likely to bring economic benefits within a few years, notably in Germany, one of the preferred destinations for many people.

EU autumn economic forecasts released on Thursday show that based on current migrant entries and a "technical assumption" about future flows, arrival rates for migrants are unlikely to slow before 2017.

The EU's executive Commission said that "overall, an additional 3 million persons is assumed to arrive in the EU over the forecast period."

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was a first-hand witness to the arrivals on Thursday, as migrants and refugees reached the island of Lesbos by dinghy while his motorcade traveled from Lesbos airport to a new registration facility.

"We realized that is a criminal process being carried out by the smugglers who cram refugees onto vessels that are not boats, but makeshift inflatables," he said. "What's happening in the Aegean Sea is a crime."

The flow of migrants into Greece's mainland and beyond was turning to a trickle on Thursday, however, as a ferry strike entered its fourth day and trapped thousands of people on the eastern Aegean islands.

Police in the Idomeni border area said 850 people had crossed into Macedonia between Wednesday and Thursday morning. Numbers usually range from 4,000 to 8,000 people per day. The strike is set to end Friday.

Despite the figures of refugee increases, the European Commission predicted that the population across the 28 EU nations would only rise by about 0.4 percent. No obvious impact on employments levels is likely, it said.

"You cannot say that this influx of refugees is likely to have a negative impact, or some kind of a shift of kicking other people out of the labor market," the EU's top economics and finance official, Pierre Moscovici, said.

However, the EU said the real impact on national budgets is difficult to predict, given a lack of complete and reliable data about exactly who is arriving in the bloc and whether they are staying.

Most people are arriving in Europe through Italy and Greece, while Hungary and Austria have been affected by heavy migrant flows. Germany and Sweden are also feeling the impact.

Those nations, among others, want the EU to apply its budget rules with flexibility, taking into account Europe's biggest refugee emergency in well over half a century, and avoid reprimanding member states for excessive spending and deficits.

The Commission said Thursday that Sweden, which has the highest share of refugees per capita and wants its EU partners to host some of the refugees arriving on its territory, is likely to feel the economic impact most, perhaps 0.5 percent of its gross domestic product this year.

Other hard-hit migrant transit and destination countries are likely to see an impact of 0.2 percent of their GDPs in 2015, but Brussels pointed out that Germany and others would benefit in coming years from a boost in spending and the creation of more jobs.

While acknowledging the potential short-term impact, the Commission did not clearly state whether it would be lenient on any country with budget problems.

However, a senior EU official said on Wednesday that some flexibility might be allowed "taking into account well-specified costs and for a limited period of time."

"This has been an asymmetrical shock for some member states," said the official, briefing reporters on condition that he not be named.

As long as any help is "one-off, shortish-term," members of the euro single currency bloc would agree to it, he said.

First refugees to be relocated from Greece head to Luxembourg

The first 30 refugees to be relocated from Greece boarded a plane in Athens on Wednesday bound for Luxembourg.

The six families from Syria and Iraq mark the start of a program seeking to relocate refugees who have arrived in Greece from nearby Turkey to other European Union countries without them having to make the arduous and often dangerous overland journey across the Balkans on foot.

The number is minuscule compared with the flood of people who risk their lives to reach Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast. Dozens of dinghies, wooden boats and other vessels reach the islands daily, carrying from 40 to hundreds of people each.

More than 600,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Greece so far this year, most of them in the past few months.

Hundreds have died as their overloaded and unseaworthy boats and dinghies overturned or sank in the Aegean. Another five people - three children and two men - drowned Tuesday night following an accident involving a boat carrying 70 people. The coast guard said Wednesday that 65 people had been rescued, and there were no further people reported missing.

Officials present at the Athens airport stressed Wednesday's flight was just a symbolic start to a program that will expand.

"Of course we have full realization that this is just a start, that 30 people compared to thousands who have fled (their homes due to war) is just a drop in the ocean," said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. "But we aim to make this drop a stream."

The relocation program aims to transfer 160,000 refugees from the EU countries most affected by the influx to other member states. A small group has already been relocated from Italy.

Tsipras also stressed the need to resettle people directly from Turkey to prevent more deaths in the Aegean Sea.

Tsipras and European Parliament head Martin Schulz, who was also at the airport, are due to visit the island of Lesbos, where the majority of people arrive by boat, on Thursday.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said the "symbolic" gesture of Wednesday's departures was "only a start, but a very, very important start."

All officials stressed that the practice of some EU countries to erect barbed wire fences at their borders trying to keep refugees out was not in line with European values.

"Walls, fences and barbed wires cannot be part of the European Union," Asselborn said. If Europe fails to change such images as well as bouts of xenophobia, "then the values of the European Union are destroyed in some way," he said.

Forbes names Putin world’s most powerful person

Barack Obama on Wednesday became the first sitting US president to slide out of the top two power rankings as published by Forbes, beaten not just by Vladimir Putin but also Angela Merkel.

The magazine published its seventh annual ranking just weeks after Putin opened a new front in the Syria war by conducting air strikes, then Putin hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Moscow.

"As Obama enters the final year of his presidency, it's clear his influence is shrinking, and it's a bigger struggle than ever to get things done," Forbes wrote.

"At home, his approval ratings are perpetually stuck under 50 percent; abroad, he's outshined by Merkel in Europe, and outmaneuvered by Putin in the Middle East."

In August, Putin's domestic approval rating soared to 87 percent, the highest level in six years, according to an independent polling center.

His intervention in Syria has seen Putin seek to muscle his way back to global influence after months of Western isolation over Ukraine.

"Putin continues to prove he's one of the few men in the world powerful enough to do what he wants – and get away with it," said Forbes.

Despite international sanctions imposed after Moscow annexed Crimea and over the conflict in Ukraine, Putin has made the US and NATO look weak, and helped rebuild Russian influence abroad, Forbes said.

The German chancellor, jumped up three places to grab the second spot, last year occupied by Obama.

"Merkel is the backbone of the 28-member European Union, and her decisive actions dealing with the Syrian refugee problem and the Greek credit crisis helped bump her up the list," Forbes said.

Pope Francis was number four and Chinese leader Xi Jinping number five, falling two spots from last year. The 2015 list ranks 73 powerbrokers among 7.3 billion people on the planet.

Among the eight newcomers were Saudi Arabia's new monarch, King Salman, number 14, and US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at number 58 and 72 respectively.

Thirty on the list come from the United States, eight come from China, and four each from Japan andRussia.

Nine women made the cut.

The youngest on the list are 31-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at number 19, and North Korea's 32-year-old leader Kim Jong-un at number 46.

‘Mafia capitale’ corruption trial opens in Rome

A one-eyed former neo-fascist gangster and 45 other defendants went on trial on Thursday accused of running a mafia crime ring in Rome that skimmed millions of euros off city hall contracts.

Prosecutors say their year-long investigation has laid bare systematic corruption in the city as politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen hooked up with mobsters to rig public tenders on everything from creating refugee centres to rubbish collection.

Massimo Carminati, a one-time member of Rome’s notorious far-right Magliana Gang, and his sidekick Salvatore Buzzi, a convicted murderer, are accused of running the operation, which prosecutors say represented a new type of mafia in Italy.

Neither man will appear in court during the trial, which is expected to last until at least next July, but they will follow proceedings via video links from the high security jails where they are being held.

They have denied they have links to the mafia, which would bring them longer prison terms and tougher jail conditions than simple corruption convictions.

“In this whole story, the thing which has really annoyed Carminati is the fact that his name has been associated with the words ‘mafia’ and ‘drugs’. He has nothing to do with the mafia,” said his lawyer Giosue Naso as he arrived at the courthouse.

Buzzi’s lawyer said his client wanted to strike a plea bargain with prosecutors, looking for a maximum four-year prison term. “That is reasonable, given that we deny any mafia involvement,” Alessandro Diddi told reporters on Thursday.

Wiretaps and video

Prosecutors have some 36,000 hours of wiretaps to back up their case, Italian media reported, as well as secretly filmed video showing some of the accused receiving bribes and discussing how they manipulated the system.

News of the investigation broke last December, shocking Italians with the scale of the accusations, which tarnished politicians from both the left and right and many obscure officials responsible for running basic services.

The revelations appeared to go some way to explaining why Rome has fallen into such disrepair in recent years, its roads pitted with holes and its streets strewn with rubbish despite some of the highest local taxes in the country.

“In Rome we are doing everything we can, but what is lacking is the cooperation of all parts of the city’s administration,” Raffaele Cantone, president of Italy’s anti-corruption authority, said last week.

“Rome has shown it does not have the necessary antibodies.”

An initial, fast-tracked trial tied to the scandal ended on Tuesday, with four defendants found guilty and handed prison terms of between four and five years. The judge agreed that the graft mechanism represented a genuine organised crime network.

Police say it operated like a mafia clan, but independently of established southern mafias such as Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and Camorra in Naples.

In exerting such broad political control over public contracts, its focus ran beyond traditional Mafia areas of extortion, money laundering and drugs.

Prosecutors allege that mobsters flourished in Rome following the 2008 election of right-wing mayor Gianni Alemanno, who is under investigation for graft, but does not face any mafia-related charges and is not involved in this trial.

Alemanno’s successor, the centre-left Ignazio Marino, is not implicated in the case, but was forced to resign last week following an unrelated expenses scandal.

(REUTERS)

http://www.france24.com/en/20151105-italy-mafia-capitale-corruption-trial-opens-rome

World Anti-Doping Agency calls for Russia to be banned from athletics

An international anti-doping commission recommended on Monday that the Russian Athletics Federation be banned from the sport over widespread doping offences in a move that could see the powerhouse Russian team miss next year's Rio Olympics.

The commission, set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), found a "deeply rooted culture of cheating" in Russian athletics. But it also identified what it called systemic failures in the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

It said in its report that the London 2012 Olympics had been "sabotaged" by the widespread inaction of international and national anti-doping authorities.

"For 2016 our recommendation is that the Russian Federation be suspended, in fact one of our hopes is that they will volunteer that, so that they can take the remedial work in time to make sure that Russian athletes can compete under a new framework if you like," Dick Pound, president of WADA, told a news conference in Geneva.

Russia finished second behind the United States in the medal table at the 2012 Olympics, with 17 medals, eight of them gold, and has long been one of the chief players in track and field.

The scandal revolves around accusations that money was demanded from top athletes to 'bury' medical tests from Russian athletes that showed drug use to ehnhance performance.

It could prove as damaging to world athletics as the corruption affair now shaking soccer's world governing body FIFA, where president Sepp Blatter has been suspended and 14 officials and marketing executives indicted on corruption charges.

There has never been any suggestion that FIFA corruption has affected results on the pitch, at the World Cup, for example.

Cover-ups
The reach of corruption in global sport could in part be explained by a huge influx of sponsorship in recent decades into bodies lacking effective governance and supervisory procedures.

The International Olympic Committee was hit by a graft scandal 15 years ago, while cricket and cycling have also been tainted.

The IAAF, which has been engulfed in a crisis spanning alleged corruption, bribery and widespread doping cover-ups, said steps would be taken to ban the Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF).

"The information in Wada's Independent Commission Report is alarming. We need time to properly digest and understand the detailed findings included in the report," IAAF president Sebastian Coe said in a statement.

"However, I have urged the IAAF Council to start the process of considering sanctions against Araf (Russian Athletics Federation). This step has not been taken lightly.

Last week the IAAF's former long-serving president Lamine Diack was placed formal investigation on suspicion of corruption and money laundering.

The 82-year-old Senegalese is alleged to have received over one million euros ($1.09 million) in bribes in 2011 to cover up positive doping tests by Russian athletes, the office of France's financial prosecutor said.

"It's disappointing to see the nature and the extent of what was going on," WADA president Dick Pound told a news conference in Geneva immediately after the report was made public.

"It's worse than we thought, it has the effect, unlike other forms of corruption of actually effecting the results on the field of play...If you can't believe results then there is a serious credibility problem. I hope all sports will look at their governance and their anti-doping systems because their existence may be at risk."

The report also said the London 2012 Olympic had been "sabotaged" by the "widespread inaction" of the IAAF, ARAF and the Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA) for allowing tainted athletes to compete.

If proved, the suppression of drug test results in return for bribes would also make a mockery of the huge investment in technical measures to detect drug use and ensure fairness.

Coe told Reuters in an interview that the IAAF had tested more than 5,000 athletes since 2009; proof, he said, that the organisation was serious about making the sport clean.