The phone calls

In Part one we reported about information about a few phone calls which allegedly link Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich to the case. On page 23 of their report Spanish investigators say that Fuentes received a phone call on May 19 (at 1.41 CET) from his sister. The investigators published the exact protocol of the phone call except for one important part. Below the part which is a word by word transcription, they state that during this phone call Fuentes warned his sister that his phone was tapped and that she should watch out for what she says. The report does not contain hints as to whether Fuentes had alerted Ignacio Labarta, José Luis Merino, Manolo Saiz or the person behind the codename Rudicio to this. This raises questions as to why Fuentes did not warn his other contacts and why the Spanish investigators do not report the exact words of Fuentes to his sister. What did he exactly say? It is conceivable that at this point in time other persons in regular contact to Fuentes already knew that Fuentes phone was tapped. This would explain why Ignacio Labarta, asistant DS of the Valeciana team, never talked about his own riders in the phone calls reproduced in the report.

A case to be continued

At a press conference on June 30 Bjarne Riis decidedly disapproved of Basso's being excluded from the Tour on the basis of the evidence presented: "Of course we want to make it very clear, that we have not been presented with any evidence whatsoever of Ivan being involved in doping."

The report of the Spanish investigators is indeed full of ifs, possiblies and presumablies. It is no wonder that insiders think it is possible that the prosecution in Madrid will find it difficult to even get Doctor Fuentes convicted on the evidence provided so far. As yet none of the initially accused riders are officially charged by the UCI or their national federations. That said throughout the media the evidence has been and still is presented as being compelling and consequently Basso and Ullrich as being undoubtedly guilty.

Renato Di Rocco, president of the Italian cycling federation, stated: „From the documents I have seen, there are not sufficient elements to accuse (Basso)". On August 29 Ivan Basso appeared at a hearing of the Italian anti-doping authorities. The hearing lasted for two hours and a second hearing was scheduled on September 12. This second hearing was then postponed to September 29 since the anti-doping authorities were still examining the documents.

For the time being the Swiss cycling federation has rejected the Guardia Civil's documents. „They bear no stamps and signatures" said Schläfli. „No Swiss court would have aknowledged this as valid documents".

On August 28 the president of the Swiss cycling federation, Lorenz Schläfli, told newsagency AFP that taking disciplinary action against Jan Ullrich could be very difficult.

On August 12 Manolo Saiz, the former manager of the Liberty Seguros cycling team, brought action against Rafael Blanco the director of the Spanish Superior Council of Sports, Consejo Superior de Deportes" (CSD). This accusation has been admitted to the Puerto case [accepted?] by the judge of the Madrid court, who is responsible for the Puerto case.

Saiz accuses Blanco of handing over documents of the Guardia Civil to the Spanish cycling federation, which had not been validated and released by Antonio Serrano the judge in charge. According to the accusations the dossier in question included several annexes, which had not been authorized by Serrano to be passed on. Saiz claims that the Superior Council of Sports received the documents on July 7, but that it send information about it on June 29. [hier ist mir unklar, was gemeint ist] Saiz claims that the CSD directors „...in an effort to show a tough stand in the fight against doping," have caused damage to himself and the company, Active Bay S.A., and its workers „by using illegal documents not authenticated, disguising their true judicial origin and falsifying the truth."

In the case of former Liberty Seguros rider Jörg Jaksche there is no movement at all, although the Spanish investigators claim to have identified him as „Bella" and „Jorge" in their report. According to the Guardia Civil report Jörg Jaksche was filmed talking to Dr. Fuentes in room 605 of the hotel „Puerta" in Madrid on May 14. Jaksche lives in Austria and rides with an Austrian license. In an interview on September 14 with the Austrian website sport1.at the president of the Austrian cycling federation, Rudolf Massak says that „..the UCI, supposedly prepared a dossier and sent this to the national federations, does not move. The Austrian federation is still waiting for the UCI dossier and can not start a case against Jaksche.

In an interview with the Dutch newspaper „De Telegraaf" (print edition of September 16) UCI president Pat McQuaid states that Jan Ullrich had had weekly out of competition doping controls between the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France 2006. The results had been all negative. McQuaid „But if we believe the Fuentes dossiers, he was taking all these banned substances in that period." The question here is: how can the Fuentes dossier possibly reveal anything at all about Ullrich's doping practises between Giro and Tour, as Fuentes' documents had already been confiscated on May 23, well before the end of the Giro.

According to German TV station ARD, Fuentes had transferred his doping practise to Hamburg after the arrests of May 23. The TV station reported that Spanish investigators confirmed that number 1, who is supposed to be Jan Ullrich, had had a blood transfusion in a hotel in Hamburg on June 20. The transfusion was administered by two persons of polish origin. One of these persons is supposed to be Dr. Markus C. resident of Bad Sachsa in Germany while the second person was presumably his wife. His house was searched by German police and it is assumed that he was the German associate of Dr. Fuentes. Ullrich's manager Wolfgang Strohband denied that Ullrich had been in Hamburg on June 20. He told a reporter of the German newspaper „Hamburger Abendblatt"  that Ullrich had travelled home immediately after the Tour de Suisse which ended on June 18. Ullrich lives in Scherzingen, Switzerland. Entrys at Jan Ullrich's web diary of June 19 and June 21 similarly suggest that he had been in Switzerland on June 20. The German daily „Hamburger Abendblatt" also has doubts as to whether Ullrich had been in Hamburg on June 20. All this raises the question: who is then number one if it is true that Ullrich was not in Hamburg?

In Germany the public prosecutor of Bonn Fred Apostel is investigating in relation to the Puerto case after German Professor Britta Bannenberg requested to file fraud charges against Jan Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla and Rudy Pevenage. On September 8 Apostel stated that the German authorities assume Ullrich used performance enhancing drugs since 2003. Apostel continued by saying that the allegations were based on documents provided by Spanish investigators, who had asked for legal assistance to verify the information.

On September 13 the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt) raided several buildings, among which were the houses of Jan Ullrich in Scherzingen, Switzerland, the houses of Rudy Pevenage, Walter Godefroot, Olaf Ludwig. German police also visited the head office of T-Mobile in Bonn where T-Mobile handed over a number of documents.

German daily Süddeutsche reported on September 14 that German police had confiscated DNA material of Jan Ullrich when raiding his house. German prosecutor Fred Apostel told German tabloid Bild on September 15 that it could possibly take two years before German authorities would be able to compare Ullrich's DNA with the blood which had been found in Fuentes fridge should Ullrich decide to take all legal measures to prevent this. Two days later German magazine Focus quotes the Swiss chief investigator on the case, Herbert Ammann, as saying that they did not take DNA samples because Jan Ullrich was not at home during the raid. Yet the Swiss authorities had the permission of a judge to take a DNA sample of Ullrich, even by force. It was well known that Ullrich would not be at home since he had just got married and would be on his honeymoon.