ARTICLE SUMMARY

• The CIRC violated the most elementary principle of justice, that of hearing both sides of an issue.   
• My perspective was not heard on the specific issues that the CIRC holds against me, nor was I given the opportunity to comment on the statements made by other interviewees, many of which have been in conflict with me, as the CIRC must have known.
• Nowhere in the CIRC report will you find one single word that was spoken or written by me during the Commission’s investigation.
• The CIRC also ignored the 19-page report, the background information and the 44 questions that I submitted to the CIRC. Even the very existence of these documents that I submitted has been concealed from anyone reading the CIRC’s final report.

FULL ARTICLE

The CIRC violated the most elementary principle of justice, that is hearing both sides of a story.

The CIRC allots me a prominent role in its report. It blames me, directly and indirectly, for a great many things which the CIRC deems to have gone wrong under my Presidency of the UCI. I am the ‘villain of the story’, a conclusion which has greatly pleased those who have for many years been trying to ‘get’ me for one or other reason, and who were responsible for setting up the CIRC.

Immediately after the report was published, WADA gloated on its website and Brian Cookson announced that I should hand back my title of Honorary President of the UCI, something he has been campaigning for since 2012.

My name features 115 times in the CIRC report and in other places I am referred to indirectly. I am almost omnipresent in the final report.

One might think that, given this apparent weight of evidence, you might also be able to read my testimony, or view on matters, somewhere in the report. Alas, no. Nowhere in the CIRC report will you find one single word that was spoken or written by me during the Commission’s investigation.

The CIRC’s judgments and opinions of me and of my Presidency of the UCI are based almost entirely on what has been said by other, anonymous people. By way of example:

According to some sources… (p. 95)

It is reported that … (p. 103)

It is also submitted that … (p. 103)

It appears that… (p. 104)

It appears from the interviews…(104)

It has been reported that…(p. 104)

Interviewees told the Commission that…(p. 104)

In interviews with the Commission, Hein Verbruggen has been described as…(p. 104)

UCI staff reported that… (p. 105)

Evidence on file suggests that…(p. 129)

It is reported that…(p.143)

Hein Verbruggen is cited as …(p. 149)

Hein Verbruggen is quoted to have responded to this as follows… (p. 150)

As a former UCI employee reported…(p.201)

Several people indicated that Hein Verbruggen… They describe how… (p. 202)

In information available to the CIRC… (p. 203)

Several interviewees confirmed that… (p. 204)

Nowhere in the report, however, will you find what I had to say concerning what the CIRC went on to accept as a matter of fact on the basis of these anonymous and unsubstantiated opinions.

I was not even given the courtesy of being heard by the CIRC on most of the issues that were eventually held against me. Statements made against me by other people – and on which the CIRC is relying in its judgements – have not been investigated by the CIRC, have not been disclosed to me and I was not given the opportunity to comment on them.

This is particularly unfair given that the CIRC knew only too well that a number of its interviewees have at some time or other been in conflict with me. For the CIRC, however, this would appear to be a valid reason for accepting their views without asking mine.

When I testified in front of the CIRC, I spoke to its members for some six hours (others did for three days or more, I read on page 17 of the report). It was a cordial discussion, certainly not confrontational. However, not one single word of what I said to the members of the Commission has appeared in the final report.

I also sent the CIRC a 19-page report on 13 August 2014, in which I asked 44 questions for the CIRC to examine, as well as 404 pages of documentation. You will find no reference whatsoever to any of this evidence and background information anywhere in the CIRC report.

Following my meeting with the CIRC on 24 November and as requested by the CIRC – or rather at the request of Dick Marty – I sent the Commission a 13-page report with the elements that in my view showed clearly that there had been a long-term and orchestrated action by Dick Pound, through WADA, which was intended to harm the UCI, cycling and myself. It was a campaign aimed to bring me and Pat McQuaid down. But you will find no reference to it in the CIRC report.

The only way in which the CIRC refers to what is presented as being my statements, is through quotes lifted from selected press articles that were held against me (see footnotes 161, 165, 224, 230-232, 264-265, 284). I was not asked by the CIRC whether I had been quoted correctly; I was not asked if I had any comments on the articles. I was not even shown the press articles – and nor do I have them, so I cannot even check the context in which my quotes were made.

The report gives a prominent platform and a loud voice to a great many interviewees who made statements about or against me. Their voices were heard by the CIRC and they resonate throughout its report.

I have been unvoiced.

The fundamental principle of hearing both sides of any story has been totally cast aside throughout the CIRC’s report.

It is a disgrace.

This website will therefore serve as my voice.