And Now, A Little “Suspense”

With Halloween just days away, stories of suspense and strange days are in the air.

And these are definitely strange days in the world of sports and doping. Perhaps the strangest of days have to do with a legal case in France. It’s a story of hackers writ large. A story about Arnie Baker, Floyd Landis and how certain documents were forged or spirited away from a certain anti-doping lab in the suburbs of Paris.

I have to say, this whole Arnie/Floyd/hacking story is more than a bit confusing. VeloNews.com appears to have gotten at least part of the story wrong, saying:

A French court has given Floyd Landis, in his absence, a suspended sentence of 18 months in prison for his alleged 2006 use of hacked material from the Laboratoire National Antidopage (National Antidoping Lab). The prosecutor in the case before the Correctional Tribune of Nanterre also asked for the same suspended sentence for Landis’ former trainer, Arnie Baker.

Meanwhile all the other media that I’ve seen, including CyclingNews.com, have reported the story a bit differently. In CyclingNews.com’s case:

The prosecutor investigating claims that Floyd Landis attempted to hack the computer of the French anti-doping agency in an apparent quest to change the data in his 2006 Tour de France doping case, has recommended the American be given an 18-month suspended sentence. An identical penalty has been recommended for Landis’ coach Arnie Baker, who is also named in the case.

Best I can tell, Landis and Baker are peripheral characters in a saga of hacking related to much bigger organizations than the French anti-doping lab. Both deny hiring the hacker(s) implicated in spying Greenpeace for the French energy company EDF. Regardless, as CyclingNews.com points out, neither Baker nor Landis is the main character in this saga:

The main character in the trial is Alain Quiros, who worked for a company named Kargus Consultants. He is accused of having hacked computer systems and illegally retrieved thousands of confidential documents for a multitude of clients, including Landis.

Further investigations however revealed more hackings, involving big industrial clients such as French energy firm EDF, who allegedly asked Quiros to spy on Greenpeace.

Quiros is reported to be held accountable also for breaking into the systems of Luxembourg firms Eurolux and Heine, who allegedly intervened in doubtful commission payments for the sale of submarines to Pakistan in 1994. This information led to a bigger investigation for presumed corruption, which currently involves several persons close to French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

VeloNews.com seems to think Vivendi is a part of this bizarre tale. Somehow, the media conglomerate is said to have brought the criminal case against Arnie Baker, Floyd Landis and others for hacking into the LNDD computer system. Huh? Say what? A private company brought a criminal case against Baker, Landis and others? I’m no expert on French law, but somehow that just doesn’t seem right.

Perhaps semi-regular reader/commenter Jean C can shed some light whether there is any truth the Vivendi connection. Update: Jean C sheds some light on the Vivendi case, which turns out to be separate from the Floyd/Arnie/hacker case in the first comment to this post.

It’s an odd case,with many twists and turns leading to who knows where, exactly. Of course, suspended sentence or not, I rather doubt that Arnie Baker or Floyd Landis will be traveling to France anytime soon. Especially in Floyd’s case. What with his new focus on becoming a NASCAR driver and all. NASCAR doesn’t do any races over there — do they?