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Thomas Bach, the President of the International Olympic Committee and Russian President Vladimir Putin share a joke at the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. (Ian Walton/Getty Images)
When the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games concluded, Russian athletes brought home more medals than any other country. It was a major public relations success for Vladimir Putin and boosted his stature domestically and internationally. But one year later, the head of Russia's anti-doping office, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, came forward with the explosive admission that Russia used an elaborate state-sponsored doping regime to give their athletes an unfair advantage in the Olympics.
Dr. Rodchenkov’s bravery inspired the U.S. Congress to pass the Rodchenkov Act, a new law that creates a criminal investigation framework for doping in international sports. As the world prepares for the Tokyo Summer Olympics, Hudson's Nate Sibley [[link removed]] hosted a group of key individuals involved in this issue to discuss how the Rodchenkov Act can address doping and tackle the larger problem of kleptocracies manipulating international sports for profit and reputation.
Nate was joined by Joseph Gillespie, unit chief of transnational threats at the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Jim Walden, managing partner at Walden Macht & Haran LLP and counsel to Dr. Rodchenkov; Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency which strongly supported the passage of the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act; Paul Massaro, a policy advisor at the U.S. Helsinki Commission in Congress; and Julia Pacetti, the president of JMP Verdant Communications, to discuss this important issue.
See important quotes from this all-star panel below, and stay tuned next week for a new episode of Hudson's kleptocracy podcast, Making a Killing. Learn more and subscribe to the podcast on Spotify [[link removed]] and Apple Podcasts [[link removed]].
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Key Takeaways [[link removed]]
Key quotes from the event, " Corruption in International Sports: Delivering Justice with the Rodchenkov Act [[link removed]]"
1. US Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart on the three major components of the Rodchenkov Act:
The bill is going to do three practical things. One, it's going to deter bad actors, like we've seen in the past, and actually give clean athletes real hope for the first time, wherever they compete, wherever they're from, that their right and opportunity to a fair playing field is going to be upheld.
The second practical outcome, it's going to hold accountable these folks who live in this never-never land, who are above the rules, but yet intentionally and knowingly break the rules by defrauding, through doping, these competitions.
The third piece is restitution and whistleblower protection. That will help athletes who are the true victims in this to be compensated where it's appropriate and the evidence presents, but also the federal whistleblower protection.
2. FBI transnational threats unit chief Joseph Gillespie on how sports can facilitate corruption:
Organized crime will figure out any way that they can to monetize variables associated with the sports, to leverage whether it's gambling, or to just leverage individuals for money, instances like extorting professional players for weaknesses that they may be hiding that they do not want to be made public. So, there's lots of leverage points that organized crime and other illicit actors will try to prey on the athletes and the organizations.
Our intent is to go after organized groups that are victimizing players, victimizing our sporting institutions and eroding the integrity of what they are for the American public. It's very important for us to maintain the integrity of the sports, the organizations, and we have the benefit of not having as bad historical sense as the European market and Asian markets, and we're thankful for that, but we don't want that to come to our shores to the extent that it has.
3. Tygart on the immense influence of doping in the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics:
These sports organizations established around the world are essentially above the law. In Russia, they paid 50 billion dollars for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. You put that kind of money flowing into these sport events that are run by people that are unaccountable and truly above the law in their own countries, and you see, unfortunately, this type of corruption that happens.
NBC has paid several billion dollars to broadcast into the United States the Tokyo 2020 games that will happen this summer. And if you look back in 2016, 2014, 2012, what [broadcasters] paid for, they didn't get. They got a rigged competition, with state-sponsored doping that rigged the outcome and tainted what they ultimately got.
4. Civil society advocate Julia Pacetti on how countering doping at the Olympics goes beyond soft power influence:
Doping carries with it many other crimes. It is one piece in the puzzle, and the fabric of crime that doping engenders also include other crimes like hacking, money laundering, financial crimes, and even attempted assassination of whistleblowers.
International games are not a lever of political soft power, necessarily, in the United States, but that is not the case culturally in the rest of the world. The soft power importance, how Putin's popularity skyrocketed after the win at Sochi, we need to understand those cultural differences and adapt the message for our domestic legislative audience and domestic public.
5. Jim Walden, counsel to Dr. Gregory Rodchenkov, on Rodchenkov's role leading Russia's Olympic doping efforts before becoming a whistleblower:
Dr. Rodchenkov was the head of anti-doping in Moscow, and he was the head of the laboratory that was supposed to make sure that athletes were clean. Many years before [and after] he took his position as head of the Moscow anti-doping lab, the Russians had been doping their athletes. To mitigate the risk of detection, they implemented an elaborate doping control system that allowed athletes to substitute clean urine for dirty urine, so when they were tested during international competitions, they would appear to be clean when in fact they were dirty.
That system was used for many years. It was used successfully during international competitions. It was used successfully during the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. As a result of the work of the hundreds of people that were responsible for implementing this system in Sochi, Russia earned more medals than any other country and more medals than it had ever won at any Olympics previously...
He is obviously regretful of the role that he played. He's also extraordinarily proud that he has given up quite a bit to try to create the dawn of a new day for clean athletes. He wants to be a force for good and he hopes there is a day where no athlete feels the kind of pressure to take part in this, and where clean athletes can compete fairly.
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
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