Secret letter from the Bundestag WADA leadership crisis intensifies - Lawsuit against USADA
National anti-doping agencies formulate opposition to WADA leadership due to the China scandal revealed by the ARD doping editorial team. The global anti-doping organisation is facing rising international opposition on an unprecedented scale
There is growing resentment about how the World Anti-Doping Agency is handling the suspected doping case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers. 18 leading national anti-doping agencies - including from France, Germany and Japan - have sent a joint letter with questions and demands to the international supervisory organisation.
It comes as ARD’s doping editorial team can also reveal divisions in the sports committee of the German Bundestag after a letter was written by the chairman expressing support for WADA’s position without consulting other members.
After an independent investigator appointed by WADA officially established that the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency, CHINADA, had not complied with the globally-accepted code without being called to account by WADA, the national doping hunters are keen to learn lessons for the future from the China scandal.
The lessons learnt from the China fiasco should be taken into account as far as possible in the upcoming modification of the global anti-doping code next year. "We can see that an institution, a NADO, has not adhered to the rules set out in the World Anti-Doping Code," says the head of the German NADA, Lars Mortsiefer: "And in this context, it was important to us that the consequences of this are also independently investigated."
Events hushed up
The ARD doping editorial team had revealed that 23 top Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a doping agent shortly before the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo before being secretly exonerated. The explanation given by the Chinese anti-doping agency, CHINADA, was that the banned prescription heart medication trimetazidine detected in all of them had allegedly entered the athletes' bodies through no fault of their own via soup pots or similar in the kitchen of a hotel.
WADA accepts this explanation to this day. They did not investigate on site itself and seemingly never asked critical questions. Credible evidence was never presented. Athletes worldwide and the global anti-doping community reacted with horror - especially as WADA kept the events quiet for years until they were uncovered by the ARD doping editorial team.
Limited investigation
When the international pressure became too great, WADA entrusted the former Swiss public prosecutor Eric Cottier with a supposedly independent investigation in a non-transparent selection process. While there was already international criticism of the opaque selection of a single investigator, the NADOs are now once again emphasising their scepticism of the conveniently restricted mandate with only two questions:
"1. Is there any evidence of bias against China, undue interference or other irregularities [...] by WADA?"
"2. was WADA's decision not to appeal the contamination scenario put forward by CHINADA [...] reasonable?"
"What could be regretted was that the mandate of the Cottier report was limited to very precise questions, and there is a whole area that was not really investigated by the Cottier report, as this was not included in its mandate," says the director general of the French anti-doping agency, AFLD, Jeremy Roubin, adding: "there could be a lack of understanding that it seems that not all investigations were carried out."
For some international experts, the impression has arisen that the WADA leadership around the controversial Polish President Witold Banka and his Swiss Director General Olivier Niggli have ordered a purely superficial report. "You do something for the sake of doing it, but you want a specific outcome...the sincerity there for rectifying and for self-reflection seems to be very low," complains Khalid Galant, South African Anti-Doping Agency (SAIDS) chief executive. Galant adds: "This is the first time in my experience in anti-doping and I've been in anti-doping for more than 20 years that I've encountered a Wada executive management that so impervious to criticism or constructive engagement."
Lack of a complete case file
Indeed, Cottier, a lawyer, diplomatically reveals constraints and criticism between the lines of his report written at the beginning of August during the Olympic Games in Paris. Although he found no misconduct on the part of WADA in either of the two questions submitted to him, there are clear indications of this in his report: "WADA's apparent silence is hardly compatible with its role as the global guardian of compliance."
Cottier is also barely able to conceal his horror at the chaotic organisational structures in WADA case processing. He criticises conditions such as the lack of a complete case file ("the non-existence of the file"), the lack of formalised guidelines for case processing ("should formalise the handling of cases"), the lack of internal work processes ("a work process should be considered"), the non-involvement of the Investigation Department ("the I&I Department did not intervene"), the arbitrary closure of cases by informal internal email ("an email circulated by the Director of the Legal Department").
Hunt for critics
International distrust of WADA is growing because instead of constructively remedying the criticism, it is hunting down its critics. Possibly in the same way as Poland's former sports minister Banka was used to from his national populist PiS party. WADA have confirmed to the ARD doping editorial team that they have filed a lawsuit in Switzerland against the United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA, for defamation.
The international anti-doping community is astonished at WADA's obvious attempts to divide the anti-doping community instead of uniting it: The 18 NADOs received a clear response from WADA to the joint letter offering dialogue, says South African Galant: "Yes, we want to talk to you. But USADA is not allowed at the table."
Currently, WADA's leadership is even preventing USADA people who sit on its commissions or committees from attending its meetings. They only grant it online. Allegedly, according to WADA, because USADA is organising a "campaign to defame and denigrate WADA".
"WADA has put itself on Trump's list"
The leadership's riotous behaviour threatens to get WADA into even more trouble in the medium term. As the largest national subsidiser, the Americans have so far withheld their contribution to WADA's 46 million dollar annual budget, which is due by the end of the year: 3.6 million dollars.
Under the Trump administration, the conflict could intensify, says US lawyer Bill Bock, who has worked for both USADA and Trump: “President Trump has a very clear opinion on international organisations that are funded by the United States but do not treat the US fairly and equally. WADA has effectively put itself on Trump's list by suing the state-funded US Anti-Doping Agency. I am sure that WADA's budget and the subsidies from the USA will now be scrutinised even more closely.”
Help from the Bundestag
Backed into a corner, the WADA leadership apparently tried to get some breathing space before the last Board meeting - with support from Germany. The meeting documents included a letter marked "Confidential" from Frank Ullrich, Chairman of the Sports Committee in the Bundestag. In it, on official Bundestag paper with the federal eagle and anniversary motto ("75 years of democracy alive"), he declared that the anger of sports politicians towards WADA over the China scandal had been dispelled after a discussion during the Olympics: "The problem of a technical appeal, in other words the explanation of no-fault doping, should now also be understandable for the majority of those present at the meeting," wrote Ullrich: "Overall, it is just not possible to shed sufficient light on the matter of doping in a few short lines."
Ullrich, a former world-class biathlete, had been accused by former protégés of having administered doping substances to them as a coach in the GDR. When Ullrich himself denied this, an investigative commission of the German Ski Association favourably attested to an "unconsciously controlled suppression mechanism".
"Great disappointment towards WADA"
However, if his colleagues on the sports committee are to be believed, he may now have suffered a relapse, because according to information from the ARD doping editorial team, he pretty much fabricated the letter single-handedly. "I don't know this letter. I would have been very pleased if such a letter had been discussed in advance, at least in the committee, with the opportunity to influence it," says Green politician Philip Krämer, Ullrich's deputy on the committee, adding: "if the impression has arisen that any criticism would no longer be on the table, we would have a problem. And then we would have to take countermeasures and make it clear that we maintain our criticism of WADA."
Die erste Seite des Briefs von Frank Ullrich an Witold Banka
Sports Committee member Stephan Mayer (CSU), formerly State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, was also surprised when he was shown the Ullrich letter from the ARD doping editorial team with a request for comment: "In terms of content, the letter in no way reflects my feelings, nor do I believe the feelings of other delegation members from this interview. I am still of the opinion that numerous questions remain unanswered and have not been sufficiently clarified. And that is why I am still very disappointed with WADA." Ullrich had an ARD query answered by the Sports Committee office, the letter to Banka was a “usual thank you letter that reflects the atmosphere of the background conversation.”
In the first week of December, the WADA Foundation Board, a kind of supervisory board, meets in Riyadh. President Banka and his Director General Niggli face unpleasant questions from the inspectors.