An unnamed official with the French AFLD anti-doping agency has said that US investigators are in France, and that the agency is prepared to hand over everything necessary in the ongoing investigation into alleged doping on the US Postal Services team.
The official told the Associated Press that the AFLD would share "everything we know, everything we have, in the fridges, in the freezers, everything, everywhere.” He added that they are prepared to answer "everything that they ask.”
The news comes after earlier, unconfirmed reports that the federal agent leading the enquiry, Jeff Novitzky, planned to spend time in Europe digging deeper into the case.
According to the AFLD official, a meeting is scheduled this week. He indicated that Novitzky is in France, along with US federal prosecutor Doug Miller and US Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart. “They are in France, that is for sure,” he stated.
In what may be a related occurrence, the house of Team RadioShack rider Yaroslav Popovych was searched on Saturday morning by the police from the Guardia di Finanza di Padova and Carabinieri from Brescia and Florence.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, they used a search warrant to gain access and took away several unidentified substances. Popovych has said that nothing illegal was found.
He had previously been served with a subpoena on October 22nd while taking part in the Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Challenge in Austin, Texas.
According to Popovych’s lawyer, he had nothing to add to the investigation being carried out by Jeff Novitzky, saying that he didn’t witness any doping while competing with the Discovery Channel, Astana and RadioShack teams.
The current federal investigation into the US Postal Service team is partly due to the allegations made earlier this year by Floyd Landis of widespread doping on the team. He implicated Lance Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel and several former team-mates, as well as others from outside the USPS squad.
Several people have already appeared before a grand jury, including Armstrong critic Betsy Andreu, Oakely rep Stephanie McIlvain and Allen Lim. The latter previously worked with Landis and acted as a physiologist and advisor to Armstrong this year.
The AFLD has been one of the most vocal of those raising questions about Armstrong. Its former chief Pierre Bordry previously told Novitzky that it would hand over the rider’s stored samples if requested to do so. He stood down in September, expressing frustration with the French authorities’ curtailing of the budget.
In 2005, French newspaper L’Equipe claimed that a reanalysis of Armstrong’s 1999 samples showed the presence of EPO. The Texan denied those claims, hinted at a conspiracy and was cleared by the UCI in its Vrijman report. That report was subsequently slated by WADA, which labelled it “fallacious in many aspects and misleading,” thus increasing tensions between it and the UCI. The relationship has since improved.
Armstrong, Bruyneel and others have repeatedly denied all allegations of doping, claiming Landis has no credibility. Today's news shows that the investigation is continuing and extending further.