Ax falls once more
Lab chief sacked as Italian drug scandal widens
Posted: Thursday October 01, 1998 12:23 PM
ROME (Reuters) -- The head of Italy's Olympic Committee testing laboratory was fired Thursday as a scandal involving the alleged covering-up of positive doping tests in soccer widened.
Emilio Gasbarrone, secretary of the Federation of Italian Sports Doctors (FMSI) and supervisor of the Olympic Committee's (CONI) Rome laboratory, had been fired, a CONI spokesman said.
Gasbarrone headed the Acqua Acetosa laboratory where the suspect doping tests were carried out. The Rome lab has become the eye of the storm of the biggest doping probe in Italian soccer history.
His sacking came a day after the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that a random test on the urine of a Udinese player after a match with Roma on January 19, 1997 was positive but the result was covered up. Udinese won 1-0.
Nearly all Italian newspapers reported Thursday that Turin magistrate Raffaele Guarinello, who has been carrying out an investigation on doping, was now looking into the possibility that more results of tests may have been covered up.
"Tens of matches that smell. The results of at least three players who tested positive may have been covered up," Rome's La Repubblica newspaper said.
Corriere della Sera said Wednesday that a Udinese player, who was not named, tested positive for a banned substance in his urine after the match.
A technician at the CONI sporting laboratory who had carried out the test on the urine of the Udinese player had informed a superior but the superior told the technician to keep his discovery quiet, Corriere reported Wednesday.
It was not clear if Gasbarrone, the lab supervisor fired Thursday, was the superior who was told of the positive result and who allegedly ordered the technician to keep it quiet.
The same technician later discovered that a second test tube which contained more of the same Udinese player's urine for a cross check had been tampered with, its seal broken in violation of standard procedures. The test results later disappeared.
Newspapers on Thursday said the Turin investigation was picking up steam with new information supplied to the magistrate by a former worker at the Acqua Acetosa lab.
"Guarinello is at a turning point [in the investigation]. Judicial warrants may be issued soon," La Repubblica said.
In Italy, investigating magistrates issue judicial warrants to suspects in criminal investigations when the magistrate feels that there may be enough evidence to press charges.
The warrants are a civil liberty guarantee so the suspect can seek legal advice while an investigation continues.
Guarinello has not made any comment on his investigation since the latest developments surfaced.
But Italy's soccer chiefs were red faced.
"I am really enraged ... I can promise you that those who made a mistake will pay for it," Luciano Nizzola, president of the Italian Soccer Federation, told reporters after Thursday's meeting of the CONI executive.
Italian newspapers have said top soccer authorities knew CONI's procedures for doping tests were suspect but did nothing.
"All of CONI risks being accused," ran a headline in Thursday's Corriere della Sera.
The CONI executive meeting on Thursday morning that decreed Gasbarrone's sacking also officially accepted the resignation earlier this week of Mario Pescante, CONI's embattled president.
Pescante's head was the first to roll over the doping controversy, which dominated the sports press this summer.
The inquiry, in which Guarinello questioned top players in the Italian team, followed allegations by Roma coach Zdenek Zeman that drug-taking was rife in Serie A soccer.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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