Month: April 2019

I did not plan to write about anti-doping questions for while after my post last September. There are many other interesting topics that I could not find time for. But I had to look into this topic again after my post was reported by the IOF to the Ethics Panel and an IOF ethics investigation started.

The sad news is that after scratching just the surface for information on IOF AD activity, a set of new questions popped up again. In this post I would like to share with you three observations that do not require any understanding of anti-doping activities to raise interesting questions.

• There are discrepancies between IOF AD numbers in different publications, and numbers for different years were apparently calculated according to different methodology. This is not a problem until you try to make sense of the numbers. If you try, you may get somewhat confused. 
  
• No information on the IOF’s 2018 AD activities as of 12 April 2019.
  The 2016 IOF AD report was published in December 2016. The 2017 report was published on 1 January 2018. Normally this delay of the 2018 AD numbers would look strange. After the IOF has reported this blog for writing about an apparent drop in AD tests in 2018, this becomes very interesting.
• In January 2019 the IOF Council minutes stated the IOF AD Fund “had not been completely used during 2018” due to fewer tests. Yet, the IOF Ethics Panel is investigating this blog for a post that discussed the impression that fewer tests were done and less money was spent on AD than collected for the “AD Fund”.

Did the IOF forget to inform the Ethics Panel that the questions this blog raised, in fact, had some basis? Or does the IOF think that asking questions about IOF AD activities is an ethical offence on its own?

I am sure that there is a good explanation for all the questions that may arise when one looks at these data. Unfortunately, they are far from being obvious. One may be forgiven to think that IOF AD reports are a bit of a mess, and that may even dampen trust in them.

I realise that this post may result in another IOF Ethics Panel investigation for highlighting more discrepancies in AD numbers and asking more questions about the IOF Anti-Doping activity. All I can bring up in my defence is a cruel upbringing when I was regularly punished for not noticing discrepancies between numbers and not asking questions about the reasons of said discrepancies.

But now let’s look into the details.

Discrepancy between IOF AD numbers

The last publication on AD activities was published more than 15 months ago on 1 January 2018 on the IOF website. It was titled “Anti-Doping – increasing number of tests” but at other places it was also referred to as the IOF Anti-Doping Report 2017. It includes a chart and a table with AD sample numbers. IC stands for in-competition, OOC for out-of-competition tests.

There was also a presentation given by the IOF in connection with the General Assembly 2018. It also showed numbers of AD samples, but some of them was different than the ones published 9 months earlier in the IOF Anti-Doping Report 2017.

 

Interesting, isn’t it?

Continue reading “More questions on IOF Anti-Doping activity”

I just received yesterday another piece of correspondence from the Ethics Panel. I felt that I had to share it, because it is very interesting that the IOF Ethics Panel knows that they have no right to investigate journalistic activity, yet they intend to do so.

In fact, the letter suggests that in their interpretation almost anybody who ever attended a larger orienteering event may get investigated by the IOF Ethics Panel for anything the Panel wants to investigate them for the rest of their life.

 

The key point above is that the Ethics Panel is fully aware that they have no right, whatsoever, under Swedish law to investigate journalistic activities, including this blog.

The IOF is registered in Sweden, hence it should adhere to the laws of Sweden. Under the Rule of Law, lower level rules of an organisation may not override national laws.

Yet, the IOF Code of Ethics is worded so broadly and so vaguely, that it gives the Ethics Panel the opportunity for a very broad interpretation to claim the power to investigate almost everybody who was ever involved in orienteering for anything they wish for. You may read the full Code here.

Here is Section 1 that was referred to in the letter

I underlined above the ones who fall under the Code. All athletes, team staff, organisers. No surprise there. The last one is the real fascinating one: “persons without status or title who engage in any activity in relation to the IOF that is covered by this Code”. The Code does not specify what are the activities that are covered, hence there is only one interpretation left: any activity in relation to the IOF.

Apparently, if you were involved in any IOF event you are subject to the Code according to the Ethics Panel interpretation. It does not matter whether you attended as an athlete, coach, organiser, or a just as a spectator. If you consider that not only major events, but also World Ranking Events are IOF events, then it gets really broad. If you attended the 2018 Trail-O WRE in Egypt as a spectator, you are subject to the Code. If you helped out with the parking on the South American Orienteering Championships in Uruguay, you are subject to the Code. If you ran on any event in Sweden where the elite was a WRE race, you are subject to the Code.

The Ethics Panel in their letter made it absolutely clear that in their view the Code gives them power not only above the laws, but they can investigate anybody for the rest of their life if they were ever subject to the Code:

“once you participate in the IOF activities, you consent to being bound by these internal regulations. Therefore, the Ethics Panel has the power given to it by the IOF Code of Ethics to conduct an inquiry.”

I duly informed about this situation the leadership of the IOF who are responsible for the legal compliance of IOF operations, especially compliance with the laws of Sweden where the IOF is registered. I trust they all agree that we shall do our best to keep the IOF a law abiding, transparent and scandal free organisation.

I just wanted to give you an update on this Ethics Panel investigation. Below you may find the most detailed description of the matter received so far. I also share some interesting observations about its lack of specifics, its timing, and the apparent lack of any legal ground for an Ethical Panel investigation into an article (blog post) published in (social) media.

Yet, we shall welcome the interest of the Ethics Panel into the financial and managerial practices of the IOF. A more active involvement of the Panel may help to improve the workings of the IOF to avoid even the possibility of ethical and financial scandals that marred so many international sport organisations from FIFA through IBU to the IOC.

The issues

The following reply was received from the Chair of the Ethics Panel on 8 March 2019 to my email sent on 28 February.

The 2016 version of the IOF Code of Ethics was also attached as the one in force when the post was published. You may read it here: IOF Code-of-Ethics – 2016.

For simplicity I will refer to the plaintiff as “IOF” not to disclose the person who submitted the report to the Ethics Panel.

Before getting into details below, I have to address the question about transparency under Section 7 in the letter of the Chair of the Ethics Panel. In my email on 2 April I asked him if he could provide any rules that would support his position on transparency.

“Finally, I am wondering if you could point to any rule – other than general privacy and protection of personal data – that would prohibit sharing the developments of this procedure with the readers of my blog. I could not find anything in the IOF Code of Ethics or any other IOF document. Based on the nulla poena sine lege principle I will keep posting updates on my blog with your kind understanding, unless you can point to a rule that would explicitly forbid that.”

In his reply on 3 April the Chair made no comment on this request, and I received no further correspondence. This suggests that there is no such rule that would prohibit making this procedure a transparent one.

The very point of this blog is to show everybody interested the way the IOF works, particularly when it comes to culture, strategy and finances. Ethics and transparency are part of this picture, as discussed earlier.

So let’s see the details below.

Continue reading “Ethics Panel investigation continues into “IOF Anti-Doping activity questions””