The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Interpol have announced a joint partnership in an effort to combat performance-enhancing drug trafficking.
The project, which has been titled “Project Energia,” will be financed by both WADA and Interpol and will have additional support from the School of Criminal Science at the University of Lausanne (UNIL). Both WADA and Interpol have been collaborating on fighting doping in sports since 2009. According to a Monday afternoon press release from WADA UNIL’s role will be to “support the project through its expertise in cybercrime and forensic analysis, especially in its chemical and physical profiling methods.”
Director General of WADA, Olivier Niggli, explained,
The Energia project is a key component in the global fight against doping. By joining forces, WADA and Interpol are better able to share intelligence on trafficking methods and on those who manufacture and distribute dangerous substances to athletes seeking an edge. In gaining such intelligence, we are better able to support efforts to cut off the supply of performance enhancing drugs at the source, before they manage to get into the hands of athletes. Along with the behavioral research stemming from the University of Lausanne, we are confident that the project will contribute significantly to protecting clean sport.
Roraima Andriani, the Director of Interpol’s Organized and Emerging Crime program, added,
The use of doping substances to artificially and illegally boost performance is no longer solely associated with elite athletes, as the Internet has made product such as anabolic steroids available to mass consumers. The market is ‘low risk, high profit’ and therefore attractive to organized crime groups worldwide. Often manufactured clandestinely with no health regulations, performance-enhancing drugs pose serious health risks to users. We therefore welcome this cooperation agreement with WADA and UNIL which will help the fight against doping in sport.
The partnership arrives at the tail-end of a tumultuous year that was marked by numerous anti-doping headlines, including the banning of many Russian athletes from the Olympic Games and a full banning of Russia from the Paralympic Games. Additionally, a high number of anti-doping labs were suspended and WADA’s own system was hacked by the cyber group known as “Fancy Bear.”
The drug meldonium raised a lot of eyebrows throughout 2016 as it transitioned to the banned substance list effective January 1, 2016. Meldonium is a blood flow drug that helps the body by increasing the size of blood vessels, thereby improving blood flow. The drug was first developed in and continues to be manufactured in Latvia which could play into the WADA/Interpol partnership as the two work to shed light on performance-enhancing drugs are transported across country lines and distributed illegally.
Read the full press release from WADA here.
And even more important, let’s all remember that Organized Crime, in the end, funds Terrorism!