Hacker team Fancy Bears has released IOC correspondence appearing to indicate Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren was given a ‘clear political order’ to file a report that resulted in Russia’s expulsion from Olympic competition.
A WADA-commissioned report into allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia authored by McLaren led to a blanket ban on Russia’s track and field team from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and also Russia’s complete exclusion from the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games next month.
“The Fancy Bears' Hack Team obtained the International Olympic Committee officials' correspondence. These emails and documents point to the fact that the Europeans and the Anglo-Saxons are fighting for power and cash in the sports world,” the leak, published Wednesday, begins.
The hacker group insists an email sent from IOC director of legal affairs, Howard Stupp, on March 7 last year, and addressed to senior IOC members Christophe De Kepper, Mark Adams and Richard Budgett, “unveils [McLaren’s] real goal to get the trump card for the Anglo-Saxons in the game vs. IOC and not to fight against doping.”
In the email, Stupp reportedly included comments to a McLaren letter which read, “It seems that RM’s (Richard McLaren’s) first report was intended to lead to the complete expulsion of the Russian Team from the Rio Games, and the second report…? To expulse the Russian Team from the PyeongChang Games?...But not to deal with the athletes on an individual basis.”
“Perhaps RM and WADA should have thought this through in more detail prior to the reports being made public - in particular, to themselves to have had the courtesy to discuss this matter of principle with the IOC in further detail, before WADA went down the path of using the (first) report to try to have the Russian Team excluded from the Rio Games, rather than RM and WADA considering to go down the path that the IOC intended to take, namely, to deal with the individual athletes on a case-by-case basis. This put the IOC and the IFs, and the Olympic movement in general, in a very difficult position.”
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Fancy Bears have previously leaked records of athletes' Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) forms, issued by WADA and which allow permission to take banned substances. They included British runner Mo Farah, cyclist Bradley Wiggins and footballer Carlos Tevez.