IAAF TASKFORCE: INTERIM REPORT TO IAAF COUNCIL, 12-13 APRIL 20171.
Due to a calendar clash, I regret I am unable to attend the Council meeting on 12-13April 2017, and I am grateful to the President for allowing me instead to present this fifth
Taskforce progress report to the Council in writing.
Progress since last Council meeting2.
At the last Council meeting, in February 2017, the Taskforce identified six milestones
that it considers need to be reached before it will be able to consider recommending
provisional reinstatement of RusAF. I set these six milestones out below in turn, and explain
the progress that has been made towards reaching them since that meeting:
2.1
That all outstanding Verification Criteria have been satisfied, and those Verification
Criteria that are ongoing -- such as the requirement of full cooperation with the French
criminal authorities -- continue to be satisfied moving forward.
Most of the Verification Criteria have been completed; a small number remain outstanding.
As far as the Taskforce is aware, the French criminal authorities are happy with thecooperation they are currently receiving from the Russian criminal authorities.
2.2
That the testing of Russian athletes (including not only IAAF testing of IRTP athletes
but also national-level testing by or on behalf of RUSADA) is taking place without any further
adverse incidents or difficulties.
The IAAF has not encountered any problems in its testing of Russian athletes since February
2017, and the Taskforce has not been advised of any problems arising in UKAD-supervised
testing of Russian athletes at national level. However:•The amount of testing being conducted remains very limited: the IAAF Medical &Anti-Doping Department has increased the number of Russian athletes in theinternational registered testing pool to 61; but there are only about 100 Russian
track & field athletes in RUSADA's national registered testing pool (as against
approximately 1,000 national squad athletes across the different age-groups).

•The Russian Investigative Committee is still refusing to release ABP samples thathave been screened at the Moscow lab, so that the IAAF can ship them to a foreignlab for further testing (despite several assurances from the Minister for Sport that
this would be sorted out).

•The issue of access to athletes in 'closed cities' has still not been resolved (althoughagain the Minister has said several times that it is close to resolution).

2.3
That RusAF has delivered a written report that provides a rigorous root cause
analysis of the legal and practical reasons why it has been unable to date to enforce theprovisional suspensions imposed on Russian track & field coaches, and an explanation,
supported by an independent legal opinion, of how in the future, whether through changes
1

in the law, in contractual arrangements or otherwise, it will be able to enforce allsuspensions (whether provisional or final) imposed on athletes and athlete support
personnel under its jurisdiction in an effective and timely fashion.
RusAF has provided a short 'legal opinion on provisional suspension of coaches' (albeit that
it is signed only by RusAF executive director A. Parkin), which Taskforce counsel Jon Taylor iscurrently reviewing. RusAF has also provided copies of correspondence indicating that,
following CAS's imposition of a 10 year ban on the coach Vladimir Mokhnev (who was seencoaching athletes in the ARD documentary broadcast in February 2017), Mr Mokhnev nolonger holds his previous position as a coach on the staff of the Yakovlev Olympic Reserve
School of the Kursk Region.
On 7 February 2017, RusAF posted the following notice on its website: 'We appeal to allathletes, coaches and support personnel to follow the Verification Criteria, otherwise RusAF
will not get reinstated to IAAF membership. We explain again that disqualified or suspended
athletes and coaches may not and must not stay, coach and train (even at their ownexpense) at the facilities of physical culture and sports organizations of the RussianFederation, as well as at overseas facilities, where athletes of Russian national team havetraining events. These facts seriously undermine all of the reforms and make it impossible for
RusAF to be reinstated to IAAF membership'.
On 22 March 2017, ARD reported that it had evidence that Dr Sergey Portugalov(provisionally suspended since August 2015 for doping Russian athletes, and recently
banned for life by CAS) was working until recently at a federal sports scientific institute inMoscow, and that in March 2017 a Moscow medical centre that its sports medicinedepartment (which provides medical support to elite athletes) was run by Dr Portugalov(but when confronted it removed his name from its website and denied that he had everworked there). We will ask RusAF to confirm it has taken appropriate steps to ensure thatno track & field athletes are working with Dr Portugalov.
2.4
That there has been an appropriate official response to the McLaren reports,
specifically addressing Professor McLaren's findings that officials from the Ministry forSport, the FSB, and the Centre for Sport Preparation were involved in the doping scheme,
either by convincingly rebutting those findings or else by acknowledging and properlyaddressing them.
On 7 February 2017, RusAF 1st VP Andrey Silnov said that 'there are no facts there [in theMcLaren Report], just assertions, and we're gradually proving that it's not a state structure,a system'. Similarly, on 27 February 2017 ROC President Alexander Zhukov said it was 'clearthat the serious evidence in the McLaren report does not exist'.
On the other hand, in a meeting in Moscow in February 2017, Colonel Zherdev, arepresentative of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, assured theTaskforce that the Committee would conduct an exhaustive investigation into the facts set
out in the McLaren Report, and anyone found to have done wrong will be brought to justice.
And on 7 February 2017 Deputy PM Vitaly Mutko said 'There were many abuses andbreaches. Athletes broke the rules and many coaches don't understand how to work without2

doping, and it's high time for them to retire'; while on 17 February 2017 he said: 'We willachieve nothing until we call to account the people encouraging athletes [to dope]. Now wedismiss these people. We have dozens of coaches, who have been under investigation, howhave lost the right to work in athletics, lost their status'. We will ask RusAF for details of thecoaches who have been fired on these grounds.
Most significantly, in a speech on 1 March 2017, the President of the Russian Federation,
Vladimir Putin, said that public officials should consider the results of the McLareninvestigation 'despite its drawbacks', 'because we need to admit that some cases of doping
have really been detected, as doping is completely unacceptable. This means that thecurrent Russian anti-doping system has failed, and this is our fault', even if 'there has neverbeen, is not and, I hope, will never be' any state-run doping program in Russia. President
Putin reportedly pledged that a new anti-doping system would be established in Russia,
under the control of an independent agency instead of the Ministry for Sport, and he said hehoped the Investigative Committee would complete its investigation into the McLaren
Report soon, and identify 'those responsible for the current situation'. The Taskforce awaits
the Investigative Committee's report.
2.5
That RusAF has taken demonstrable objective and practical steps to cultivate theclean sport movement championed by Andrey Dmitriev and his colleagues, including having
RusAF’s leading officials, athletes and coaches speak in support of the movement, andproviding financial and other practical assistance to the movement as appropriate.
In January 2017 Russian 1500m runner Andrey Dmitriev spoke out publicly, first in an on-line
blog and then on German television, about the continuing culture of doping in Russian track& field. Taskforce members met with Mr Dmitriev in Moscow in February 2017, and wereimpressed with the efforts he was making, with some colleagues, to start a public debate
and a popular movement in support of clean sport.
On 24 January 2017, RusAF posted the following notice on its website: 'The All-Russian
Athletics Federation considers the fight against doping to be a priority direction of itsactivity. In this regard, the president of the federation Dmitry Shlyakhtin said: "TheFederation has worked to analyze the number of anti-doping rule violations in each coachinggroup. The Ministry of Sport of the Russian Federation and RUSADA will be informed of theresults of this work for an appropriate response. It was decided that for each subsequentcase of doping, a thorough investigation will be conducted with the application of sanctions
not only to the athlete, but also to his trainer. We remind you that in accordance with thelabor legislation the trainer is obliged to take measures to prevent violations of the allRussian anti-doping rules and anti-doping rules approved by international anti-dopingorganizations by the athlete. VFLA welcomes the formation of an anti-doping environment
in Russian track and field athletics as one of the criteria for restoring to the IAAF. The latest
cases of zero tolerance of doping among athletes and informing the general public about itin the media and online resources are evidence of a belief in pure sport. The Federation isready to react independently to objective cases of anti-doping rule violations. It is for thispurpose that a hotline has been set up and an e-mail address (maria_t@rusathletics.com)
has been brought to the entire track and field community to which you can send any3

information about doping violations and suggestions for improving anti-doping work. We
believe that this way, constructively cooperating, we can minimize the use of doping".'
On 15 February 2017, Mr Shlyakhtin told me that 'his [Dmitriev's] statements to foreign
media and absence of desire to contact with the Russian relevant authorities investigating
similar situations and officials of the federation trying to fight against doping in sport andready to support him seem very strange to us and indicated a kind of "game" from his side.
However, we will take all the possible steps to support Dmitriev and other whistleblowers'.
Mr Shlyakhtin said that he and national team head coach Yuriy Borzakovskiy would speak at
the National Indoor Championships in February 2017 'in support of the formation of open
anti-doping environment and will also give a positive comment on Dmitriev's statements
concerning suspended coaches trying to participate in athletes' trainings'. We await
confirmation from Mr Shlyakhtin that that happened as promised. We have not seen any
other public statement from RusAF that supports Mr Dmitriev or praises him for his actions.
We also understand that Mr Shlyakhtin, RusAF executive director Alexander Parkin, andRusAF sports director Mr Kruporushnikov have reached out to Mr Dmitriev and/or the'Rocket Sport Project' (RSP) with which he was associated (even if to date it appears thesupport has taken the form of more words than tangible actions).
However, Mr Dmitriev himself has advised us that:•various prominent people (including Deputy PM Vitaly Mutko, Elena Isinbayeva, RusAF
national team coach Yuriy Borzakovskiy, and RusAF 1st VP Andrey Silnov) publicly
criticised him for his actions, and he was branded a 'traitor' and a liar in the mass
media. We ourselves have seen Russian media reports in which RusAF 1st VP Andrey
Silnov said that the whistle-blowers were 'motivated by money' and criticised Dmitriev
specifically, suggesting that he had spoken out only out of spite because he had been
bypassed by other athletes, and that the things he said 'do not affect anybody'; RusAF
executive director Alexander Parkin also suggested that Dmitriev had acted out of spite
because others had been selected for the national team instead of him; and RusAF
President Dimitri Shlyakhtin said that Dmitriev had not proved himself as an athlete andso 'is not the one who has a right to judge RusAF. Our work will be judged by theathletics community';•with the honourable exception of hammer thrower Sergey Litvinov, none of themembers of the current RusAF national squad have supported Mr Dmitriev or the clean
sport movement (and one of them suggested to him that they have been told to staysilent);•Elena Isinbayeva and Yuriy Borzakovskiy did not sign the pledge for clean sport atcleansport.org, nor did they join or endorse the 'Say NO to doping' group created by
RSP on vk.com (the Russian equivalent of Facebook);•in late January 2017, Dmitriev was advised by his coach that he had been fired by bothof his employers: (i) the Center for Sports Training in Krasnodar, which is run by RusAF,
and which employed him as an athlete; and (ii) the 'Urojay' Sports School for Children in4the Krasnodar Region, which is run by the Ministry for Sport of the Krasnodar Region,
and which employed him as a coach/athlete. Sergey Litvinov intervened and got him
reinstated to the first position, at the Center for Sports Training in Krasnodar (RusAF
also wrote to them), but he was not reinstated to the second position. There had beenno suggestion that he was going to be fired from these positions before the ARD
documentary was aired. RusAF says that he was 'dismissed at his own request';•he was told that officials from the Ministry for Sport were encouraging one of thecoaches he accused in the ARD documentary of doping athletes to sue him for
defamation, and even offered to give him their lawyer to take the case (RusAF say this isnot true);•

he was required to attend an interview by a criminal investigator from the Investigative
Committee to explain the allegations he made on the ARD documentary. He says shetreated him as if he was the criminal, not the accuser, and called him a 'snitch' and a'slanderer', and noted that slander is a criminal offence in Russia; he says she said 'How

are you feeling now being a snitch? Do you know that in Russia we don’t like snitches? How areyou going to live with that? Does your conscience allow you to be a snitch and you are feelingfine now?'; and she called Rodchenkov and the Stepanovs 'traitors', and asked him how muchhe had been paid by ARD and WADA to speak out; and•his relatives told him they had received phone calls from the police and the military,asking where he was, and on 23 February he was approached in a hotel where he wasstaying by four men, including an FSB agent, the head of the army recruitment office,and a policeman. They took his passport from him, and he only got it back after astruggle. They told him that he had to sign a document acknowledging that he wasobliged to report to the army recruitment office on 27 February, or else he would be
put in prison immediately. He had been registered with the army recruitment officewhere his parents live for many years, but they never previously made any attempt tofind him or ask him to report for military service. He did not report, and as a result,according to RusAF, 'materials from the Crimean military administrative agency weretransferred to law enforcement agencies to resolve the issue of criminal liability'.

As a result of all of the above, Mr Dmitriev advised that he felt too isolated and at risk tocontinue with his fight for clean sport in track & field, and ultimately he felt it necessary toleave Russia entirely and take sanctuary abroad.
2.6
WADA has determined that all of the conditions it has specified for thereinstatement of RUSADA as a truly autonomous, independent and properly-resourced
national anti-doping organisation have been met, and on that basis has reinstated RUSADA
as the official, Code-compliant NADO for Russia. (The current WADA roadmap contemplates
full reinstatement of RUSADA by November 2017, but that depends on timely achievementof the various milestones on that roadmap. If there are delays/interference in achieving anyof those milestones, then the timeframe for compliance will be delayed and the November
date would, we understand, be unlikely to be achievable).
We understand that the international experts appointed by WADA have recruited a newcohort of Doping Control Officers, who are now being trained by UK Anti-Doping. The5

objective remains for RUSADA to start its own testing again in May 2017 (it plans to conduct
about 6,000 tests in total in 2017, including on track & field athletes), with a view to fullreinstatement in November 2017.
On the other hand, the new RUSADA Supervisory Board elected Elena Isinbayeva as its chair.
It is difficult to see how this helps to achieve the desired change in culture in Russian track &field, or how it helps to promote an open environment for Russian whistle-blowers, giventhat Ms Isinbaeva (i) called the original WADA Commission report 'groundless' even though
she had never read it; (ii) strongly criticised the original whistle-blowers, Vitaly Stepanov andJuliya Stepanova; and (iii) has also criticised Mr Dmitriev. My understanding is that WADA iscurrently discussing Ms Isinbaeva's election as chair of the RUSADA Supervisory Board withthe Russian authorities.
Recommended action/next steps
3.
Based on the above, the Taskforce is concerned that not much progress has been
made since its last report, and in some instances the position has moved backwards. I am
writing to RusAF President Dimitri Shlyakhtin, noting the issues mentioned above, asking forhis comments, and for his view on when he thinks it will be worthwhile to schedule our next
meeting.
4.
In the meantime, the Taskforce asks the Council simply to note the contents of thisreport.
Participation of Russian athletes in international competitions as neutral athletes
4.
Finally, earlier this month, while attending the WADA Symposium in Lausanne, I wasapproached by Russian Minister for Sport Pavel Kolobkov, who told me that therequirement that Russian athletes who are granted special eligibility to compete underCompetition Rule 22.1A only compete as neutral athletes, and not for their country, hascaused substantial dissent in Russia, including against Mr Shlyakhtin, who has been strongly
criticised for not insisting that such athletes be permitted to compete for Russia. I
subsequently received an email from Mr Shlyakhtin, confirming what the Minister had said,
and asking that the requirement to compete as neutral athletes be reconsidered.
5.
I told both Minister Kolobkov and Mr Shlyakhtin that they needed to direct theirrequest to the IAAF Council, and I understand that Mr Shlyakhtin has since written to theIAAF President. It is of course a matter for the Council, but the Taskforce's view is that therestriction in question (that those granted special eligibility may only compete as neutralathletes) is important to ensure that the sanction carries sufficient weight to incentivise
members to abide by their membership obligations. It is the loss of the right to enterathletes in international competitions that gives the sanction of suspension of membershipits weight and its deterrent effect. If the athletes are still able to participate in international
competitions in their national colours, then in the view of the Taskforce much of the force ofthat sanction would be lost.
Rune Andersen, Taskforce Chair, 8 April 20176