Widespread doping and manipulation of tests by Russian athletes and officials at the Sochi Olympics, overseen by the ministry of sport, was confirmed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, further fuelling calls for a complete ban on the country from the Rio Games.
According to the WADA's independent commission report, which was led by Canadian law professor and sports lawyer Richard McLaren and unveiled at a Toronto news conference, a Moscow laboratory protected Russian athletes during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
McLaren, who was a member of WADA's independent commission which last year exposed widespread doping and corruption in Russian athletics, leading to the ban on Russian track and field athletes from Rio, said the Russian Ministry of Sport oversaw the manipulation of athletes' analytical results and sample swapping.
The report addressed accusations made by former Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory head Grigory Rodchenkov, who two months ago told the New York Times dozens of Russians used performance-enhancing drugs in Sochi with approval from national sports authorities.
Rodchenkov claimed that up to 15 Russian medal winners at the Sochi Winter Games were part of a program in which tainted urine samples were switched for clean ones.
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According to McLaren, Rodchenkov and all other witnesses interviewed were deemed credible and the personnel at the Moscow laboratory did not have a choice in whether to be involved in the state-directed system.
Many organisations, including the United States Anti-Doping agency, have said that the Sochi revelations should lead to a blanket ban on Russia.
However, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) indicated last week that he was reluctant to see athletes from one sport punished for the crimes of those, or officials, from another.
Russian President Vladimir Putin staked his reputation on the Sochi Games, which at around $50 billion was the most expensive in Olympic history.
Russia topped the medal table with 13 gold medals and 33 overall.
WADA appointed McLaren in May to lead the probe after some observers voiced concerns about a conflict of interest given that the allegations related to the Sochi Olympics and that WADA is funded by the International Olympic Committee.
The report says Rodchenkov would receive a "save" or "quarantine" code message from the ministry to determine whether he simply lost an athlete's sample or correctly processed it.
Breaking down his three main findings, McLaren said the "disappearing sample methodology" involved Rodchenkov's lab, the Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA), the Center of Sports Preparation of National Teams of Russia (CSP) and the Russian sports ministry.
The report says Rodchenkov would receive a "save" or "quarantine" code message from the ministry to determine whether he simply lost an athlete's sample or correctly processed it.
Altogether, 643 samples from doped athletes vanished between 2012 and 2015, with more than 30 different sports benefiting.
McLaren's report directly names deputy sports minister Yuri Nagornykh and chief anti-doping advisor Natalia Zhelanova as being central to this scheme, but also says it was "inconceivable" that sports minister Vitaly Mutko, who also runs Russian football and sits on FIFA's council, was unaware of what was going on.
The second finding, which McLaren refers to as the "sample swapping methodology", relates to the clandestine operation that Rodchenkov ran with the FSB at Sochi's anti-doping laboratory.
This involved smuggling Russian samples which would almost certainly have failed a drugs test out of the lab through a "mouse hole" in the wall and swapping them for samples with clean urine stored in a secret room on the other side of the wall.
Rodchenkov would sometimes add table salt to the urine to hide the manipulation and then an FSB agent would reseal the bottle.
The exiled Russian told the New York Times he had done this for "dozens of athletes", including at least 15 medals winners in Sochi, where Russia topped the medal table.
McLaren said he could not confirm the number of medal winners but said it was several.
Regarding his final finding, that the Russian sports ministry and the FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union's
KGB, had been heavily involved in all of these schemes, McLaren described their role as "actively directing, controlling and overseeing" the endemic doping.
