Lance Armstrong faces new doping charges
Louis Vuitton Boetie MM M45714 Acclaimed champion and accused cheat, Lance Armstrong still hasn't distanced himself from all those chasing after him.Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner who earlier this year saw a two-year federal investigation into his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs dropped without any charges being filed, has been thrown back into the spotlight of doping suspicions.The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has formally charged Armstrong and five former members of his support staff — three doctors, a trainer and a team manager — of engaging in a massive doping conspiracy from 1998 to 2011.Armstrong won the Tour de France seven consecutive times, from 1999 to 2005, becoming the idol of cycling fans and the hero of millions of fellow cancer survivors.Armstrong, 40, who retired from cycling last year, could have his Tour de France titles stripped as a result of the charges.USADA, in a letter to Armstrong dated June 12, said it has compiled expansive evidence against him.Armstrong fired back with a defiant denial of the charges, as has become his custom.
Louis Vuitton Boetie GM M45713 "These are the very same charges and the same witnesses that the Justice Department chose not to pursue after a two-year investigation," Armstrong posted Wednesday to his more than 3.5 million followers on Twitter. "These charges are baseless, motivated by spite and advanced through testimony bought and paid for by promises of anonymity and immunity."I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one."USADA's letter includes previously unpublicized allegations against Armstrong, alleging blood samples taken from him in 2009 and 2010 were "fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions."The letter says numerous riders with firsthand knowledge will testify that Armstrong used EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone and that he trafficked in those drugs and administered them to other cyclists from 1998 to 2005. Witnesses will also testify, the letter says, that Armstrong used human growth hormone before 1996.
Louis Vuitton Galliera PM M56382 USADA oversees anti-doping in U.S. Olympic sports. It can bring charges that lead to suspensions and rescinding of titles but has no authority to bring criminal charges.The case now is forwarded to a USADA review board, which examines written material only and recommends whether or not to proceed with a hearing before an arbitration panel. Armstrong has until June 22 to supply written materials to the review board.The letter to Armstrong says that if a hearing is held, it should take place by Nov. 1 but could occur before then, a person familiar with the case told USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity.An arbitration panel independent of USADA — likely a three-person panel made up of AAA, CAS and North American Court of Arbitration for Sport arbitrators — will rule on whether violations took place and, if so, what the punishment will be.Travis Tygart, CEO of USADA, said in a statement that he will not comment on the evidence.David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees USADA, declined to assess the strength of the evidence but told USA TODAY Sports, "I think it's significant that it's not an athlete alone being charged. It's an athlete/entourage. I think the charge is significant."
Louis Vuitton Delightful GM M40354 Armstrong has never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. This case is what is called non-analytical, because it is based on testimony, not lab results.Howman, when asked if that makes the case against Armstrong weak, pointed to the sanctions against disgraced Olympic champion sprinter Marion Jones in a non-analytical case."There have been a lot of athletes who have faced sanctions through non-analytical evidence," Howman said. "We do not rely on science only nowadays. You cannot accept that science alone will find those who might be breaching the rules. So this is not unusual. It's something that's becoming more normal and accepted."USADA's letter and an earlier letter from one of Armstrong's lawyers details the level of animosity that exists — and has for years — between USADA and Armstrong's camp.The USADA letter says that Armstrong's team has engaged in an organized conspiracy to conceal and cover up doping conduct dating to 1999. It alleges a coverup took place and that it has witnesses who will prove "Lance Armstrong and other co-conspirators engaged in activities to conceal their conduct and mislead anti-doping authorities including … attempts to intimidate, discredit, silence and retaliate against witnesses."
Louis Vuitton Citadine GM M93827 Last week, Armstrong's lawyer, Robert Luskin, sent a letter to USADA declining the agency's invitation to meet with Armstrong to discuss the allegations in person.The June 8 letter, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY Sports, accuses USADA of conducting not an investigation but "a vendetta, which has nothing to do with learning the truth and everything to do with settling a score and garnering publicity at Lance's expense."JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said overconfidence in trusted managers allowed traders to accumulate more than $2 billion in losses through a strategy that “violated common sense.” Risk-monitoring systems and executives at the largest U.S. bank failed to adequately police threats concentrated in a derivatives portfolio at a London unit of the chief investment office, he said. The division wasn’t subjected to the same scrutiny as other businesses, and managers there deviated from control procedures, even after triggers on risk limits were breached, Dimon told the Senate Banking Committee yesterday.
Louis Vuitton Citadine GM M93238 “The first error we made was that the CIO unit had done so well for so long that I think it was a little bit of complacency about what was taking place,” Dimon, 56, said. The CIO made “several billion dollars” in the three or four years preceding the loss on a book of credit derivatives designed to profit if the U.S. economy weakened and corporations were under duress. “It changed into something I cannot publicly defend,” he said. Under pressure from lawmakers after disclosing the loss on May 10, JPMorgan may test pay provisions to reclaim bonuses and stock compensation from executives. The loss has renewed debate in Washington for tighter trading curbs and raised questions about whether anyone can manage a financial empire as vast as JPMorgan, which has more than $2.3 trillion in assets, larger than the annual gross domestic product of Brazil or the U.K. “You’re obviously renowned, rightfully so,” for being one of the best CEOs in the industry, said Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, in a two-hour hearing. “But are these institutions today just too complex to manage?”
Louis Vuitton Citadine GM M93237 London Cowboys.The hearing left some senators with unanswered questions about exactly what went wrong at the New York-based bank. Democrats including Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said the loss shows the need for the Volcker rule, which limits so-called proprietary trading where banks bet their own funds to make a profit, rather than hedge operational risks, as Dimon said the trades were intended. “I don’t want to see consumer lenders in Columbus losing their jobs because cowboys in London make too many risky bets,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, referring to 19,000 JPMorgan employees in his state. JPMorgan is down 16 percent in New York trading since the May 10 disclosure, erasing about $24.5 billion in market value. The stock rose 1.6 percent to $34.30 yesterday.“He exceeded my expectations and he kept his cool,” Bruce Foerster, president of South Beach Capital Markets in Miami, said of Dimon’s testimony. “He looked like a confident leader willing to show humility.” ‘Solidly Profitable’ .While Dimon wouldn’t update the size of the loss on the derivatives book, which he had previously said could widen by $1 billion or more, he forecast the bank would be “solidly profitable” when it reports second-quarter results on July 13.
Louis Vuitton Neverfull GM M40561 “What should happen afterwards is people focus on it, think about it and decide what to do,” Dimon said. The risk committee in the unit wasn’t independent enough and should have more rigorously policed the credit derivatives book, he said. Dimon said a new formula for estimating possible trading losses, which was implemented in mid-January, may have exacerbated the problem. JPMorgan uses a value-at-risk calculation to estimate the maximum amount that traders would expect to lose on 95 out of 100 trading days, according to quarterly filings with regulators. It’s calculated daily, and the average for a quarter is reported in regulatory filings.‘Still Unaware’.“We were still unaware that the model might have contributed to the problem” as of April 13, he said. The switch, and the timing of the firm’s disclosures, are the focus of an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission as the government examines how long senior executives knew about the CIO’s swelling bets and losses. Dimon said May 10 that the bank had reviewed the effectiveness of the new VaR model, deemed it “inadequate” and decided to return to the previous version, which almost doubled the unit’s risk estimate. The bank hasn’t yet found any “nefarious purposes” behind the change, which was reviewed for six months beforehand, he said. The chief investment office asked to switch the VaR model “sometime in 2011,” Dimon said during the hearing. An independent group reviewed the proposed change and the new formula had “back-tested better” than the old one, he said.
Louis Vuitton Neverfull MM M40560 He was copied on a memo approving the change, Dimon said afterward in an interview with CNBC, according to a transcript. “I paid virtually no attention to it. I didn’t think it was significant,” he said.‘Bad Judgment’.The board of directors may use so-called clawback provisions in executive compensation plans to reclaim pay made in the past two years, he said. Dimon’s $23 million pay package for 2011 made him the highest-paid U.S. banker and Drew was paid $14 million for her work last year.“For senior people, which most of these people are, you can claw back for even bad judgment,” Dimon told the committee. “When the board finishes its review, which is the appropriate time to make those decisions, you can expect that we will take proper corrective action and it is likely there will be clawbacks.”It was the first of two appearances Dimon will make on Capitol Hill to face lawmakers probing how the most profitable U.S. bank, often praised for its “fortress” balance sheet, could have taken such risks after coming through the 2008 financial crisis without a single quarterly loss. Dimon testifies again on June 19 before the House Financial Services Committee. “What we don’t know yet, we don’t know the details of what kind of position they took, what they were doing,” said Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the committee, after the hearing. “We’ll find that out in due time and we’ll be able to tell if they were managing risk or just seeking profits.”
Louis Vuitton Citadine PM M40556 Five U.S. agencies are working to complete the Volcker rule, which is named for former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and is intended to reduce risky trading by banks with federally insured deposits and access to the central bank’s discount window. Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, pressed Dimon on whether the bank was hedging its credit risk or gambling for profit, saying that the loss stemmed from the same types of securities that were at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis, synthetic credit-default swaps. “This transaction that you said morphed, what did it morph into? Russian roulette?” he asked. “It morphed into something I can’t justify,” Dimon said. “It was just too risky for our company.”