Russia's Doping Scandal: The Main Allegations

An independent commission by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has recommended that the Russian athletics federation be declared "non-compliant" with anti-doping code, and be suspended from track and field competition, the report published Monday said.

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) president Sebastien Coe asked that Russia respond to the 350-page report by Friday, at which time the IAAF will convene to discuss a suspension of Russian track and field athletes from international competition. This could mean no 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro for Russian athletics.

"We want to take a serious look at toughening civil penalties, and perhaps even think about introducing criminal ones," Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said at a press conference Wednesday, RIA Novosti reported.

With Russia set to learn its 2016 Olympic fate on Friday, here is a rundown of the report's main allegations.

Six Russian athletes competed at the London Olympics even though they showed "abnormal" values in their biological passport, a method of using blood samples to track the effect of performance-enhancing drugs.

The athletes benefited from "unexplained and highly suspicious delayed notifications" that allowed them to compete at the London games prior to their suspension coming into effect, the report said.

Two of the six athletes won medals, with race-walker Sergei Kirdyapkin winning gold. The WADA report has thrown suspicion over Russia's London success.

Russia has been running a "state-supported" doping program that "may be a residue of the old Soviet Union system, WADA commission leader and International Olympic Committee veteran Dick Pound said Monday.

With the help of coaches and Sergei Portugalov, a veteran sports doctor who chaired the Russian athletics federation's medical commission, Russian athletes routinely took banned substances.

In addition to undercover footage from a German television documentary that showed Russian athletes discussing the effects of coach-prescribed doping products, marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova and Yulia Stepanova provided investigators with e-mails in which Portugalov allegedly prescribed doping products.

Such a vast doping program required extensive covering-up. The report alleges that this included the Russian Sports Ministry.

The Russian anti-doping lab's director Grigory Rodchenkov is accused of taking money from athletes to conceal positive tests. He drew criticism for referring to WADA investigators as “idiots,” and resigned from his post on Tuesday.

In addition to confidential sources, the Russian athlete Stepanova and her husband Vitaly Stepanov were important sources for the allegations against Rodchenkov.

Rodchenkov allegedly held weekly meetings with an agent of Russia's Federal Security Services (FSB), and lab personnel believed the lab was bugged.

The agent reportedly went by the name Evgeny Blokhin or Blotkin and was interested in "the mood of WADA."
FSB personnel infiltrated the lab used for the Sochi Winter Olympics last year, the report said, citing anonymous sources.

Although no written document proves government involvement, "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 the Russian authorities," Pound said, The Associated Press reported Monday.