All the power of the investigations by the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO) of Lieutenant Colonel Balas, and their reports that everyone fears, the word of God in the numerous trials of authorities, politicians, and relatives these days, and sufficient reason to condemn even a prosecutor general, turns into nothing, dead letter, “syllogisms based on false premises,” before judges, prosecutors, and courts dealing with sports matters, such as the head of Criminal Court number 1 of Cáceres who has acquitted Marcos Maynar of the doping offense.
Read more A different world
It is not the first case in which UCO investigations in the world of doping clash with judicial incredulity, as if the courts considered that the good name of athletes and that of the professionals who prepare them, and the Spain brand, which owes so much to the success of its champions, are a legal asset to protect even more precious than the health of athletes indicated in article 362 of the Penal Code to motivate the inclusion of the doping offense. This is how, at least, some investigators appreciate it, who, demotivated, have abandoned a Public Health and Doping section of the UCO that has been without a head for months.
20 years ago, Operación Puerto, the most important police action against doping carried out worldwide, left behind an air of frustration and a trial that bordered on the absurd seven years later, a judge who archived the proceedings three times and hundreds of pieces of evidence, wiretaps, and blood bags collected by the UCO acting as judicial police that did not result in any conviction or sanction for athletes in Spain. In 2010, another judge flatly dismissed Operación Galgo, a UCO investigation affecting athlete Marta Domínguez, by discarding as illegal some telephone interceptions he had previously authorized.
In 2021, the Public Health and Doping section of the UCO launched Operación Ílex, focused on a doctor and university professor from Cáceres, Marcos Maynar, who allegedly sent doping products to athletes. Five years later, after the trial, the sentence condemns Maynar for drug trafficking to two years in prison and 21 months of disqualification from his profession related to sports preparation and medicine, and his assistant Ignacio Bartolomé to nine months. Judge Rafael Estévez, however, acquits Maynar of the doping offense for providing cyclist Superman López, through his masseur, with HMG (menotropin) ampoules, a hormone on the World Agency’s list of prohibited substances that the Colombian climber, according to the UCO report, injected himself with in Budapest before starting the 2022 Giro. “Evidence provided with extraordinary weakness,” the judge ruled in his decision of last May 28 to dismiss the charges, referring to the way the UCO interprets the exchange of WhatsApp messages between the masseur, Vidente Belda Jr., the doctor, and the cyclist, and the injury consequent to the injection that forced him to abandon the Giro midway through the ascent of Etna three days later.
The evidence that seemed so weak to the Cáceres judge, however, allowed the International Cycling Union (UCI) to sanction Superman López with a four-year suspension, a punishment ratified by the highly respected Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in the Olympic capital, Lausanne. “The disciplinary procedure was initiated following an investigation carried out by the control agency based on evidence obtained from the Spanish Civil Guard and the Spanish Anti-Doping Agency (CELAD) within the framework of the so-called Operación ÍIex, related to Dr. Marcos Maynar,” the UCI recalled in a statement to congratulate itself on the sanction. And the CAS highlighted the arguments used to ratify López’s sanction until July 2027: “The Panel determined that: Mr. López was in possession of menotropin, thus infringing the Anti-Doping Regulations and received the substance at some point between May 1 and 5, 2022. Mr. López suffered swelling in his leg just before the start of the 2022 Giro d’Italia and his doctor acted on the hypothesis that Mr. López had used menotropin and that this was the cause of the swelling. Mr. López used the substance at some point between May 1 and 5, 2022. The Panel is fully convinced that the UCI has met its burden of proof and has unanimously ruled that Mr. López possessed and consumed a prohibited substance.”
Read more Cáceres, capital of rural talent
The UCO’s claims were not helped in the process by the indictment from Cáceres prosecutor Sonia Castañeda, who understood that Maynar should not be accused of doping, and explained the reasons in a paragraph that showed she had not read the UCO report in which, after deciphering coded telephone messages, it was indicated that the menotropin vials were transported by masseur Vicente Beldan to administer them to cyclist Miguel Ángel López with a view to the Giro d’Italia, and that he suffered inflammation in one leg as a result of the injection, which forced him to withdraw from the Italian race. The prosecutor did not understand it this way and wrote: “From the proceedings carried out, it has not been sufficiently proven to which athlete they were intended and in relation to which specific competition, nor if it has been consumed or to what extent, the effect produced or the danger, both generic and specific, that this medication can cause with its ingestion.” In contrast, the State lawyer who led the CELAD prosecution did maintain the doping accusation.
The Spanish anti-doping agency, which could not administratively sanction Maynar for doping without a criminal conviction, has announced that it is studying the sentence to see if it can appeal it.
Maynar has announced that he intends to appeal the conviction for drug trafficking.
Maynar’s lawyer has also reported that the legal advisors of Miguel Ángel López, who has opened a butcher shop in Boyacá, have asked him for the sentence to study it and use it to appeal the sanction ratified by the CAS before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court.
Read more David Bisbal returns to ‘Operación triunfo’ 25 years later