"Otherwise, you will go to prison.". In November 2015, he took the fateful decision to escape Russia. just hours after hed warned that he had become a target of the Putin government. Russias sunk to some amazing depths in this case rather than face the truth, and he just hopes the Russian government will do the right thing with his family, and leave them alone.. At the laboratories from countries below 50, like Russia on 28, there is high probability [of] corruption at sample collection sites, or inside the laboratory, he says. Until, that is, you remember, Vladimir Putins roving assassins are trying to establish Rodchenkovs secret location so they can snuff him out, a traitor to the state. what happened to grigory rodchenkov wife. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. By day, Rodchenkov was the director of the Olympic anti-doping lab. Grigory entered the career as Scientist In his early life after completing his formal education.. Born on 24 October 1958, the Scientist Grigory Rodchenkov is arguably the worlds most influential social media star. Three Russian athletes accused of doping in Sochi Olga Zaytseva, Yana Romanova, and Olga Vilukhina, who were stripped of their silver biathalon medals and banned from future Olympic competition suedRodchenkov for libel in February. He doesnt wish ill on Russia, Walden said. https://open.spotify.com/episode/15p3DpjZeaXCwcXyGTytMj?si=fKvvPb9aTSu6iGWWVImbyg This great-great-granddaughter of Alexander II, who was Emperor of Russia until his assassination in 1881, now lives in Spain. In a Monday-morning call with journalists, Rodchenkovs lawyer, Jim Walden of Walden, Macht & Haran, called the February lawsuit filing frivolous, announcing that his client filed a motion to dismiss the biathletes libel suit. Fogel dedicated his Oscar victory to the hero of Icarus, Grigory Rodchenkov, the chemist who once ran Moscows anti-doping lab. The super-lab's name is a misnomer. Dr Grigory Rodchenkov is the former director of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory, which was suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2015 for facilitating Russia's elaborate state-sponsored doping program. He enjoys the Russian greats too Lermontov, Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, plus the poets Joseph Brodsky and Daniil Kharms. You will be redirected back to your article in, Get The Latest IndieWire Alerts And Newsletters Delivered Directly To Your Inbox. A lawyer for Grigory Rodchenkov says Russia wants him to face justice at home. They are still obsessed with Leninist ideas. Kamaev was found dead in mysterious circumstances soon after Rodchenkov fled to California. 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Sports Russian doping whistleblower reveals country plotted his suicide to stop him from telling the truth to world "Russia is emboldened when no one holds it to account and we have all seen the consequences," Rodchenkov said. Hes grinning, I think. He helped develop and distribute banned performance enhancing substances for thousands of Russian sports stars from 2005 to 2015. He became a whistleblower on the extensive doping program he had overseen and which had been used to boost the Russian teams performance at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Following the announcement, Jim Walden, an attorney for Rodchenkov, issued a statement applauding the decision by the IOC that sends a powerful message that it will not tolerate state-sponsored cheating by any nation.. I told him to stop it, he says. Germanys ARD TV network accused him of presiding over a massive doping programme. Wiki Biography & Celebrity Profiles as wikipedia. Scroll Down and find everything about him. The CPI rates nations on a scale of 0 to 100, with the lowest numbers indicating most corruption. He was also the subject of a 2017 Netflix documentary that further revealed the workings of the Russian operation, in which officials allegedly tampered with hundreds, if not thousands, of drug samples to shield the countrys Olympic athletes from punishment. The suit claims that Rodchenkov defamed three Russian biathletes Olga Zaytseva, Yana Romanova and Olga Vilukhina when Rodchenkov included them on a list of athletes who took performance-enhancing drugs as part of a state-controlled program that corrupted the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. In November 2017, an IOC panel concluded: Whatever his motivation may be and whichever wrongdoing he may have committed in the past, Dr. Rodchenkov was telling the truth when he provided explanations of the cover-up scheme that he managed., On December 5, 2017, it was announced that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics. Jim Walden: Correct. It has nothing to do with sports. Grigory Rodchenkov is the former director of Moscow's anti-doping lab that oversaw drug testing at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The FSB terminated Kamaev with an invisible inoculation, he thinks. In politics, Putin was determined as president to project Russia as a great power. 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Now, on the day the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Rodchenkovs lawyer said his client is living in constant fear that President Vladimir Putins government will retaliate against him and his family. Grigory Rodchenkov: Absolutely. Like in "Soviet times," the Kremlin will tell you today that Rodchenkov is a criminal and mentally ill. An emergency room saved his life and soon, the Kremlin would change his life. Its exciting, and Im very honored, Fogel tells Deadline. In 2016, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov blew the whistle on Russia's state-run doping program, revealing a deep web of deception and fraud that he had once helped facilitate. The cloak-and-dagger atmospherics surrounding our interview might seem a little overblown. The agency found witnesses who backed up his story and marks left by the tools used to tamper with the tamper-proof bottles. Shortly after the Oscars, Russias Minister of Sport, Pavel Kolobkov, reportedly dismissed the film as, in effect, fake news. In the sporting arena, however, things were going less well. They couldnt understand or estimate the magnitude of our lies and falsification, he tells me. Grigory Mikhailovich Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory, the Anti-Doping Center, was charged with covering up positive drug test cases and destroying more than thousand urine samples and found guilty by the Independent Commission of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2015. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the Russian national drug testing laboratory, became a whistleblower after the 2014 Olympics and admitted switching urine samples for athletes who were. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Rodchenkov sees himself as a late-developing whistleblower. "Bryan, it's a. "I told him, 'Forget you are meeting me, yes it . By Michael Pavitt |. The spies made a miraculous breakthrough: they discovered how to open tamper-proof bottles used in urine control tests. In 2015, he escaped to the United States carrying the files of Russia's doping program. The samples went into these tamper-proof bottles used by the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency. Scott Pelley: Putin says, "You're a liar.". In the film, Rodchenkov revealed how he implemented an elaborate scheme allowing Russian athletes to dope throughout the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, all while avoiding detection. The warning about a possible threat on the life of Grigory Rodchenkov, former director of the Moscow Anti-Doping Center and by his own admission, one of the masterminds of a vast Russian. Hes very concerned and worried about his family. He says Russia is the victim of a hypocritical western plot, led by Washington and London. Bottle was closed and now bottle is opened. And at the current Winter Games Russia itself has been disqualified although some Russian athletes, not under suspicion, are competing under the Olympic flag. Because they tried to blackmail me, to threaten me. 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In November 2017, 17 months after first speaking to New York Times reporters,Rodchenkov shared journal entries with the newspaper, written soon before and after the Sochi Olympics. Grigory Rodchenkov says tens of thousands of elite athletes spanning every major sport have got away with doping, and continue to do so in nations all around the world, aided and abetted in many . Rodchenkov claims that he was not jailed by Russian authorities in 2012 because they had earmarked him to dope their athletes at 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Rodchenkov's revelations spurred an explosive 2016 report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), led by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, that laid out proof of at least 1,000 Russian athletes . And you take, it's a small drawer, you take it away. Another colleague and sports executive, Vyacheslav Sinyev, died the same month. A group of FSB officers were covertly inserted into Rodchenkovs doping control team. Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, whose tell-all book, The Rodchenkov Affair: How I Brought Down Putin's Secret Doping Empire, was unable to collect the 30,000 first prize as he is still in a witness . Rodchenkov discussed doping at the Sochi Olympics with whistle-blower Vitaly Stepanov, who recorded 15 hours of their conversations without his knowledge. While neither of those things has happened (at least not yet), she has played an influential role in shaping law, especially the advancement of LGBTQIA+ rights. His lab perfected what he calls a swapping system. The lab had a secure side and a non-secure side, separated by a locked door. From July 2006 until November 2015 he has worked as the director of the Anti-Doping Center, Russias only laboratory accredited by WADA. But Rodchenkov the most significant sports whistleblower of the 21st century is probably at the top. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. Grigory Rodchenkov: Of course Putin. They knew that the state perks that went with Olympic status were dependent on keeping their mouth shut. Rodchenkovs revelations led directly to Russias Olympic Committee being suspended from world sport; the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rowed back on this and allowed some Russian athletes to compete in the 2016 Rio and 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. In 2015 his problems began, however. Popularly known as the Scientist of Russia. He considers for a few moments, then says they will be most surprised he was still, in effect, running his laboratory which was and is accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) during the summer of 2011 while confined to a psychiatric hospital, having tried to kill himself while under investigation for alleged drug dealing. In multiple high-profile incidents, whistleblowers and government critics have been imprisoned or killed under suspicious circumstances. They came out on top of the medal count. Rodchenkov recalls how as a promising student athlete he first took performance-enhancing drugs in 1981, while sitting on the sofa of his Moscow apartment. They included the 2012 London Olympics, the dirtiest in history, according to Rodchenkov. Rodchenkov likens the backroom drama at Sochi to a thriller.