LAUSANNE — The International Olympic Committee Tuesday barred Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko and other ministry officials from attending the Rio Games after the revelation of a state-run doping system.
"The IOC will not grant any accreditation to any official of the Russian Ministry of Sport or any person implicated in the (independent) report for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad Rio 2016," said an IOC statement.
An independent inquiry commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency said the Russian sports ministry organized a 'state-dictated failsafe system' of cheating by Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics and other major events hosted by Russia.
Deputy sports minister Yury Nagornykh is among officials to have been suspended by the Kremlin since the report was released Monday.
Four Russian officials suspended
Russia's scandal-mired sports minister said Tuesday that four more officials have been suspended over allegations of state-run doping.
Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport news agency that his advisor Natalya Zhelanova, senior sporting officials Avak Abalyan and Irina Rodionova and Moscow anti-doping laboratory deputy head Yury Chizov were all temporarily suspended after being named in a bombshell report released Monday.
A damning report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) detailed an elaborate cheating scheme run by the sports ministry that affected 30 sports with help from the FSB state intelligence agency.
The Kremlin Monday pledged to suspend all those implicated and deputy sports minister Yury Nagornykh — described as the point man for running the program — became the first head to roll.
The WADA probe by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren quoted Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov as saying it was "inconceivable" that Mutko did not know about the whole doping system.
But the Kremlin has said that it is sticking by Mutko and he insisted that there "were not and cannot be any allegations directed against me".
"Everything the minister does is always connected only with the fight against doping," he told R-Sport.
In connection with the report, WADA also called on FIFA to investigate Mutko, a member of the football world body's executive, over drug failures in football.
While it found no smoking gun directly linking Mutko to the broader program to protect drug cheats it said Mutko took the decision to cover up the doping case of a foreign player in the Russian football league.
