Prosecutors in Belgium have urged a criminal court to impose a jail sentence of six months against former professional cyclists Alexander Vinoukourov and Alexandr Kolobnev for corruption relating to their allegedly fixing the result of the 2010 edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
The race was won by Astana 's Vinokourov and it is alleged that ahead of the finish he struck a deal with Kolobnev, who finished 6 seconds behind in second place, to pay the Katusha cyclist €150,000 if he did not dispute the finale, reports L’Equipe.
The public prosecutor’s office is also seeking a fine of €100,000 against Vinokourov and €50,000 against Kolobnev.
It has also requested the confiscation of €150,000 seized from the latter’s bank account in Lugano, Switzerland, during the investigation.
Lawyers for both the accused deny the charges and claim that they are inadmissible. They have asked for both to be acquitted or, alternatively, for any jail sentence handed down to be suspended.
Judgment is due to be delivered at the criminal court in Liege on 8 October.
The case has been rumbling on for several years, with world cycling’s governing body opening an investigation in 2012 but subsequently closing it with no action taken.
The same year, investigators in Italy identified two transfers, one of €50,000, the other of €100,000, from Vinokourov’s Monaco bank account to Kolobnev’s Swiss one, and also uncovered emails between the pair.
In July 2012 Vinokourov, who retired from racing after winning Olympic gold in London that summer and is now general manager of Astana journalists he had made payments to Kolobnev but insisted the money was a loan and nothing to do with his Liège-Bastogne-Liège victory.
The investigation by prosecutors in Belgium, meanwhile, was launched in 2014.
Vinokourov has been in the news in recent days for a different reason – on Sunday, he won the world championship in his age group at the Ironman 70.3 triathlon in Nice.
They also jailed a bloke for three days for not wearing a helmet and riding one of those electric unicycles. To be fair, that's South Australia...
Part of this was for some Schwalbe tyres - order arrived this morning, so that big slice of humble pie set me up for the task.
"Federation"??
I don't know. I saw there was a proposal to cut e-bike duties, I think.
It's not called the RideLondon-Essex sportive anymore. It's called the Ford RideLondon-Essex sportive. We should all remember that.
Yes but we all know that the cycle lane will be forgotten once the pedestrian path is done
I think traffic and congestion will be worse in ten years time.
I wasn't aware that there's such a thing as an English Highway Code.
Preparing?! Some places?!...
Been using normal squirt this winter frozen water or liquid water seems to make no difference to it, bar a bit more frequent application if the...