Five Russian Biathletes Accused by Austria of Doping

LONDON — Five Russian biathletes and five officials with the Russian national team are the subject of an investigation into doping and corruption-related offenses, the Austrian authorities told the team on a visit to its hotel Wednesday.

The case is related to a World Cup event in Hochfilzen, Austria, last year, and comes during a wider criminal investigation into doping and corruption involving the International Biathlon Union, which is based in Salzburg. The organization’s longtime president, Anders Besseberg, resigned this year shortly after a raid on the union’s headquarters after prosecutors claimed that up to $300,000 had been paid to cover up doping infringements they said were carried out by Russian athletes.

The revelation that Austrian investigators are investigating the Russian athletes and officials comes at a sensitive time as a deadline for the Russian authorities to hand over critical laboratory data to the World Anti-Doping Agency draws near. WADA says the data is critical to identifying the athletes who participated in a yearslong state-supported cheating scheme unmasked more than two years ago.

Doping is a criminal offense in Austria. The state attorney’s office for the prosecution of economic offenses and corruption informed the “accused persons” of its investigation at their hotel in Hochfilzen, where they were staying for this week’s World Cup event. None of the accused have been interviewed, it said.

While the authorities did not provide the names of the individuals involved, a Russian news agency said the group included three athletes competing at this week’s World Cup and a former Olympic gold medalist.

Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, described the visit by the authorities to the athlete hotel on the eve of a major competition as “wild.”

The Russian news agency Tass, citing a Russian embassy spokesman in Austria, said government officials had been dispatched to Hochfilzen “to provide necessary assistance on the spot.”

The case highlights the continuing difficulty Russia has had in restoring its battered reputation in international sports. Anton Shipulin, a gold medalist in biathlon at the tainted Sochi Games, said he was “angry and furious about the witch hunt that is going on” and, after being named among the suspects, denied that he had ever cheated. Another athlete, Alexander Loginov, said he had been accused of a doping offense related to blood transfusions in 2017.

April’s raid on the biathlon organization that led to the fall of Besseberg and his deputy came after the antidoping agency had given details gleaned by its own investigation team to law enforcement officials in Norway — where a raid also took place — and Austria, as well as to the global police organization Interpol.

Last month, nine biathletes from Kazakhstan — including the country’s entire Olympic team — were suspended on suspicion of doping after criminal investigations in Austria and Italy.

The full scope of the Russian doping program was revealed by Grigory Rodchenkov, a former director of the country’s antidoping laboratory. Rodchenkov, who is in hiding in the United States, provided details of abuses in biathlon, according to his lawyer.

Doping by Russian athletes infected biathlon for years, and even after the wider doping program was unmasked, the I.B.U. faced repeated criticism from many of its own members for what they perceived to be weak antidoping policies and a soft stance toward Russia. That prompted teams from the United States, Ukraine and the Czech Republic to withdraw from a season-ending event at the Russian resort Tyumen this year.

In 2011, Jacques Rogge, then the I.O.C. president, was so concerned about Russia’s biathlon federation that he urged the country’s president at the time, Dmitri A. Medvedev, to take stronger action. Rodchenkov said in a sworn statement that the billionaire owner of the Nets, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, had played a role in obscuring the scheme when he led the Russian Biathlon Union. Prokhorov, who denies the claim, is helping to finance a New York defamation suit against Rodchenkov by three barred biathletes.