• Civil Guard. They disarmed an organization that traded with EPO for athletes

Between one Spanish nurse and a Serbian trafficker they had one of the largest networks of illegal EPO sales in Europe. The first acted from the private hospital of Cádiz specialized in dialysis patients where he worked, and the second was responsible for logistics and international sales from Barcelona.

Thus, between Cádiz and Barcelona they had set up a business that had been running for at least 10 years, as the UCO of the Civil Guard has discovered . This discovery came about thanks to the fact that one of the websites of the band specialized in illegal sale of EPO had already appeared in an investigation of 10 years ago: the so-called Master operation. This new investigation has been called Hipoxianet operation, in which in addition to these two, there are four others investigated.

At that time it was impossible to open a solid investigation because the only data was that a website with the server hosted in Iceland was dedicated to selling EPO. However, this information remained in the Civil Guard archives awaiting new clues. These arrived in 2017 from the hand of the Spanish Anti-Doping Agency, which had previously received in its mailbox of anonymous complaints information about this business controlled by the Serbian and the nurse.

A round business: on average, they took out 250 euros for each dose sold. Let it be known, thanks to the inspections of the Junta de Andalucía at the Cádiz clinic, those investigated have been able to sell at least 5,000 doses in the last three years alone. At that rate, it is estimated that they have sold more than 15,000 in the decade they have been acting. Now they caught 850, put in a storage room in bad conditions.

Dismantled an organization that traded with EPO for athletes worldwide

The nurse was fundamental to the network: in dialysis clinics, patients are given EPO as part of the treatment. And the nurse, who was in charge of ordering supplies, asked for surpluses behind the backs of his bosses to sell it on the Serbian-controlled network. Among the destinations where they sold, apart from Spain, were Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Turkey and Greece. And the price of a dose of the highest quality, 350 euros. National sales were managed by the nurse, and international by Serbian.

The success of this network was based on the fact that the orders made by the nurse were completely legal, that is, of medicines from accredited pharmacists and always sold within the relevant expiration period . The steps to get a dose will be as follows: first, the interested party wrote or called a phone number that appeared on the various websites. From there, he was instructed to enter the money into an account that could be in Austria, in Slovakia or in Cyprus. Sometimes, even the payment was required in bitcoins to make it difficult for him to follow the trail. A tremendous profit: more than 800,000 euros have been requisitioned .

The doses sold could be of different types, depending on the concentration they had, and that could range from a concentration of 1,000 international units (ui) or reach 10,000. The first sold for about 200 euros, and the last, the most powerful at a price of between 300 and 350 euros the dose. The band even offered the opportunity to make a first trial order selling for 100 euros a dose of 1000 ui

Who were the recipients? People of all kinds, but among them, and that attracts the attention of researchers, a lot of neighborhood sportsman. That is, people who do not compete at a professional level but in popular races even at the neighborhood level, we say.

Web with payment instructions.

Another detail, as explained sources of the case to this newspaper, was the profile of the buyers: customers over 60 years, from the categories called Master 60, but also from the category Master 20, Master 30 or Master 40. And in some cases there were athletes from official federations, even a few former members of the national team in their various specialties. The same sources stressed that there is no known athlete among the buyers that are known to date.

The sports disciplines of the clients of this network were varied: athletes, triathletes, cyclists or motocross riders, among others. The agents emphasize that the great danger of this medicine is that while it helps to produce many more red blood cells, and therefore to carry more oxygen in the blood and get less tired, the hematocrit level rises until it can touch dangerous situations if not There is strict medical control.

Something that united all customers is that, despite doping, they did sports and had a diet of athletes, because the EPO works, the researchers emphasize, but it has to be accompanied by sports training. However, the performance can rise quietly by 30% without even consuming detectable doses in the anti-doping controls, so for those who participated in those neighborhood races where control is never done it is possible that their performance would have increased much more .

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