Lausanne, September 24, 2013

Claudia Pechstein complaint - Landesgericht Munich

Official Statement from the International Skating Union

"The ISU has noticed the new media campaign launched by Ms. Pechstein and her lawyers. In principle, the ISU has always preferred to deal with the case in the court and not in the media, but at this time concluded that a short reaction is appropriate.

The ISU keeps its position that the case has been finally adjudicated by the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) and by two decisions of the Swiss Supreme Court. The German court should not have jurisdiction to review the case. In addition the German court should not have jurisdiction over the ISU. The attempt of the Pechstein lawyers to create jurisdiction of the court in Munich over the ISU is based on the artificial ground, which is suing in the first place the ISU Member federation in Germany (DESG) which in fact would not be responsible for the sanction. The Pechstein team has confirmed this in the media right at the beginning. Also, if at all, this case should be dealt with before CAS as both the ISU and Ms. Pechstein have signed an arbitration agreement in favor of this arbitral institution.

In the merits, the ISU believes that Ms. Pechstein was correctly found guilty of doping. The newly "discovered" extremely mild and compensated blood anomaly, if it exists at all, can in no case explain the extremely unusual high values of reticulocytes, which, in addition had always "coincidentally" appeared at the time of top world competitions and their rapid decline in the periods after the competitions. The ISU has presented to the court scientific evidence in this respect. The ISU considers that it must prevail in this case and therefore the ISU cannot negotiate any settlement as proposed by the Pechstein lawyers."