MOSCOW -- A spokesman for Russia's top investigative agency said Friday it would like to question the former head of the Russian doping lab over his allegations of state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Vesti FM radio that it would need to ask Grigory Rodchenkov about his claim that he switched tainted urine samples for clean ones at the lab used for the Sochi Games. Rodchenkov told the New York Times that he received help from people he believed to be officers of the Russian security services.
Russian officials have acknowledged that the country has a problem with doping, but denied any government involvement.
Markin described Rodchenkov's claims as part of what he called a U.S. campaign to "discredit our country, paint it in black."
Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko dismissed Rodchenkov's claims as "silliness."
"Who could have forced him to do that?" Mutko told the Interfax news agency. "It's not clear why he's talking about it, that's why we asked the prosecutors to question him."
Mutko said that during the Sochi Games the drug-testing lab had 18 foreign nationals and was equipped with CCTV cameras, including its corridors.
"There was a system of monitoring starting from taking samples, and all those recordings have been preserved," Mutko said.
"The use of doping and responsibility for that isn't the government's business they are now trying to accuse us of," he said, according to Interfaxe. "It's individual decisions of a personal coach, a head coach or an athlete."
