The State Attorney General’s Office has forwarded to the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office the complaint against members of the anti-doping agency (CELAD), including the former president José Luis Terreros, which was sent to him by the president of the Higher Sports Council (CSD) and of the same CELAD, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, to decide whether the reported events are a crime and what type of crime, and, if so, to carry out the investigations and actions that it deems appropriate to formulate an accusation. “The Attorney General’s Office cannot instruct. Our mission is to study the complaints that come to us and if we appreciate that the facts are likely to be a crime, we send them to the corresponding Prosecutor’s Office,” say sources from the Attorney General’s Office, which received the complaint the second week of January and after studying the large number of documents that accompanied it and organize them, he decided to continue ahead.
This covers one more stage in a case that could lead to the prosecution of José Luis Terreros, dismissed as director of CELAD on January 26 following a complaint by a former agency official of certain events and dysfunctions that could be criminals. The same day, the agency’s governing council appointed doctor and economist Silvia Calzón as director.
The complainant, who worked as head of service at CELAD, denounces, first of all, the irregular use of public funds to pay private companies for sampling services carried out with a single control agent when the law, according to complainant, demands that there be two agents, with the consequent damage to the public treasury and the other bidding companies. These contracts were awarded between 2013 and 2021 to the German company Professional Worldwide Controls (PWC), which always presented the most economically advantageous offer, even knowing, as they explained when they were complained, that it would not be profitable and sustainable, unless Checks were carried out with two agents. Only in 2022, following a ruling from the National Court that implicitly left the need for two agents to validate anti-doping controls, did CELAD insert into the contracts the clause making the double presence of agents mandatory. Between April 1 and December 31, 2022, CELAD left PWC unpaid for 16 checks because they had been carried out by a single agent, as stated by the agency in response to a parliamentary question.
“Some checks were always carried out with a single agent, and it was not considered a defect that did not invalidate,” explains a former agency worker. “But there is a moment when the issue of one agent, two agents begins to be on the table. It is in the second half of 2019. This is when this begins to reach the courts, which sometimes resolve in a contradictory way. Sometimes the National Court confirmed sanctions after controls with a single agent, and other times it annulled them.” The agency also maintains that PWC never requested permission to carry out controls with a single agent nor were they authorized at any time. As far as I know, permission was not even requested to carry out controls with a single agent. “There were tremendous discussions with PWC and the contracts and tenders began to be divided into pieces so that smaller Spanish companies could also bid,” the same sources explain. “In the end they managed to twist their arm without denouncing the contract, because if it had been done, they could decide not to carry out any controls and it would have been months without being able to carry out any.” The agency immediately proceeded to review the thousands of controls from previous years to see how many there had only been one agent.
As the Spanish anti-doping law requires the presence of two agents at controls, the agency encountered the problem that some of the sanctioned positives were annulled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the ordinary courts. To avoid this, and to not cause greater harm to the athletes, the agency then decided not to sanction the positives detected after controls with a single agent. “What could not be done was to move cases forward
knowing that they are not going to get anywhere. Making people’s lives bitter,” he explains, to justify the inaction of the former worker at the then AEPSAD (the change to CELAD came in 2023, with the approval of the new anti-doping law). “Either you have a test that you can make it to the end, or what are you doing.”
The most striking case is that of the sprinter Patrick Chinedu, positive for nandrolone in 2019, who continued competing as if nothing had happened. Only after the case was made public did CELAD decide to open disciplinary proceedings against him. And this is the second fact reported.
The third reported fact refers to the irregular granting of therapeutic use authorizations to athletes with retroactive effect, in particular the case of the marathon runner and national record holder Majida Maayouf. Finally, the complaint sent by the CSD includes the alleged irregular granting of administrative authorizations to act as control agents to certain people without the beneficiaries complying with the procedures and requirements legally established to carry out such activity.