One week after Italian Olympic Committee CONI requested a four year ban from its National Anti-Doping Tribunal (TNA) for team manager Gianni Savio, the Italian has said that he believes the matter is at an end.
Androni Giocattoli manager Savio was cleared last week by the courts of Massa in a separate proceeding relating to the same accusations of the supply of banned substances. On Friday Judge Ermanno De Mattia dismissed the accusations by one of Savio’s former riders, Luca De Angeli, that he had provided him with EPO.
De Angeli competed with the team in 2003 and 2005 and tested positive for EPO in the latter season. Savio rejected the allegations, saying that he wouldn’t know what the banned substance looks like, and claimed De Angeli had a ‘vendetta’ against him.
Following the decision, Savio credited his lawyer with helping shape the outcome. “I believe that the investigations I have been conducting for months and the initiatives of Counsellor Giuseppe Napoleone have been decisive in proving the absolute unreliability of the ex-rider and of his ‘witnesses’,” he said.
The Italian commented further today in a statement sent to VeloNation, saying that he believed the Massa court decision would bring the CONI sanction proceedings to an end.
“When CONI asked to submit me to the National Anti-Doping Court, I said I would prove that I had never committed the crime I had been charged with” he stated. “And so it was! On December 15, 2011, the judge of the Law Court of Massa fully acquitted me. The slanderous charges of which ex-rider Luca De Angeli accused me were therefore judged as completely groundless.
“The submission requested by CONI on December 13, 2011 - more than two years after my examination of April 16, 2009 and two days before the trial in Massa - was based on the request of indictment by the Public Prosecutor. But, neither the Public Prosecutor nor CONI knew the content of the documents I had presented to the Judge to prove the complete unreliability of my accusers and their repeated false testimony given under oath.
“Such documents have been collected through long and meticulous investigations, thank to which the judge has fully acquitted me.”
VeloNation has sought confirmation from CONI that the matter is indeed at an end. A response has not yet been given at the time of writing, but will be published when it is received.
Savio’s team picked up two stage wins in the 2011 Giro d’Italia, with Angel Vicioso and Jose Rujano triumphing; the latter was also second on two other stages and placed seventh overall.