MOSCOW: Russian investigators on Tuesday accused a whistleblower, who has spoken out about Moscow’s doping cover-up at the Sochi Winter Olympics, of personally supplying athletes and coaches with performance-enhancing drugs.

The claims about Grigory Rodchenkov come ahead of a crucial meeting next week when the International Olympic Committee is to decide whether Russia can compete at next year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Russia’s state committee of inquiry said Rodchenkov had supplied the country’s athletes with doping products and eliminated the samples given for testing to conceal the evidence of his crime.

“It was established that Rodchenkov personally supplied the athletes and coaches with medicines whose proven features were not known to them but which later were established to constitute performance-enhancing drugs,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

He then destroyed the athletes’ samples and accused Russia of implementing of “a certain doping programme” and concealed “the results of his criminal activities,” the statement on the committee’s official website added.

In September, Moscow’s court issued an arrest warrant for Rodchenkov, who helped orchestrate the country’s state-sponsored Olympic doping programme and has since fled to the United States.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2017