WADA’s chief investigator, Richard McLaren, said that going into the IWF’s leadership under former President Tamas Ajaman revealed millions of dollars in missing money and 40 positive doping cases that were kept quiet.
The McLaren report accuses former Romanian-born Hungarian IWF president Ayian of an “autocratic, authoritarian” management style that resulted in sports management being “dysfunctional, ineffective.”
The report says Ajan has used “cash tyranny” during his decade-long rule to control the IWF, with the president collecting fines for doping and regularly withdrawing large sums from the organisation’s treasury without accounting.
“It is absolutely impossible to determine how much of the money collected or withdrawn was spent on legal expenses,” the investigation said in a summary.
The missing amount is $ 10.4 million (€ 9.15 million), the report said.
“Everyone was kept in financial ignorance through hidden bank accounts,” McCarren said. “Some cash was listed, some no.”
McLaren, who was also the lead investigator in the Russian drug scandal in 2015, said the probe had also found 40 positive drug cases buried in IWF records.
“This includes gold and silver medalists who have not yet been sampled,” the report said.
“This information was passed on to WADA for further investigation,” the report added, citing a “doping culture” that was honored in weightlifting.
In addition to financial and doping violations, the McLaren report also identified corruption in the IWF’s decision-making process.
“The last two election congresses were marked by the purchase of votes for the presidency and board,” the report said.
Ajan resigned as head of the IWF in April following allegations of corruption in the documentary “Lord of the Weightlifters” broadcast by the German public broadcaster ARD.
The documentary claimed that a “culture of corruption” had been established in Olympic sports, with prominent weightlifters rarely conducting drug tests and doping controllers taking cash to accept manipulated urine samples.
Ajan, 81, who has been with the IWF since 1976 as Secretary-General for 24 years and President for the last 20 years, denied the allegations.
Ajan insisted that he had been the victim of an “unjustified attack” by the ARD.
“This film has completely ruined my life and 50 years of work. Much of my work has been about doping prevention,” he said.
However, a McLaren report released on Thursday outlined a stunning portrait of Ajana’s rule, saying the Hungarian official had developed his “authoritarian methods” during the Cold War, when weightlifting was dominated by Eastern bloc countries.
The report said Ajan has maintained strong ties with the sport’s national member federations through “patronage, rewards and penalties.”
“Ajan ran the IWF as if it were his own personal slowdown or a private company over which he had absolute control,” the report said, noting that it controlled all cash withdrawals and deposits in the federation’s main bank account.
“According to a confidential witness, the annual ‘audit’ consisted of the IWF’s Internal Audit Committee (IAC) going to Budapest for $ 100 (€ 88) or a bottle of whiskey, and Ajan said, ‘Here you are, here are the books.’ Sign them and we’re going to dinner, “the report said.
The report details the practice of uncontrolled accounting, noting that until 2009 the work of the IAC was weak.
