In a blow to the credibility of Russia's denials of a state-backed Olympic doping program, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) judging panel has endorsed a key whistleblower and the investigator who exposed the plot.
Orchestrated cheating at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games was "a conspiracy which infected and subverted the Olympic Games in the worst possible manner," an IOC commission prosecuting a slew of Russian cases said on Monday.
Former Moscow and Sochi laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov was a "truthful witness," the panel said in publishing its first detailed verdict on the same day it sanctioned five more Russian athletes to bring the total to 19.
Rodchenkov is living in the United States under FBI protection as a cooperating witness.
The IOC panel agreed that investigator Richard McLaren proved the existence of a doping conspiracy beyond reasonable doubt.
The public vindication will fuel speculation that the IOC executive board meeting next Tuesday should ban Russia's team from the Pyeongchang Olympics.
Medals in biathlon, bobsled, cross-country skiing, speedskating and skeleton have been stripped by the IOC, and Russia were knocked off the top of the medals table last week in a previous round of disqualifications.
The first athlete disqualified four weeks ago was Alexander Legkov, a cross-country skier who won the men's 50km gold and 4x10km relay silver.
The full verdict in his case was published on Monday and confirmed the panel "is more than comfortably satisfied that the evidence establishes that a scheme of sample-swapping as described in the McLaren Report and the affidavit of Dr. Rodchenkov was indeed in place and implemented in Sochi."
A final IOC judgment on whether the Russian state ultimately corrupted the Winter Games that cost $51 billion to prepare for and stage should come next week.
The latest guilty verdicts announced on Monday involved Aleksei Negodailo and Dmitrii Trunenkov, members of the gold medal-winning four-man bobsled; Yana Romanova, the silver medalist in the 4x6-kilometer women's biathlon relay; Olga Vilukhina, the silver medalist in the same relay and 7.5-kilometer biathlon; and Sergei Chudinov, who was fifth in skeleton.
The Russian Bobsleigh Federation said in a statement the decisions were "the height of injustice" that lacked legal basis, and promised to contest them.
The appeals route for Russian athletes is the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the IOC's home city of Lausanne, Switzerland.
All disqualified athletes are banned from the Olympics for life.
