DISGRACED US CYCLIST Floyd Landis today dropped an appeal on a suspended sentence given by a French court over a shady espionage operation to hack the computers of an anti-doping laboratory.
Landis and his former trainer Arnie Barker received one-year suspended jail sentences in November 2011 after a French court found them guilty of fraudulently receiving documents from the official LNDD anti-doping agency.
Barker did not appeal but Landis did.
Landis, who tried to clear his name after being stripped of his title as winner of the 2006 Tour de France, had been accused of using a hacker to get documents from the LNDD.
His lawyer Emilie Bailly said Landis had been “ruined by the different legal procedures and does not have the means” to come to France to face the judges at Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris.
He has “always taken an ‘empty chair’ approach,” the French anti-doping agency’s lawyer said, using a French term signifying a boycott.
In the same trial in November last year, the court fined French state energy giant EDF €1.5 million for using the consultancy to spy on environmental campaigners Greenpeace. EDF admitted hiring the consultancy to “monitor” Greenpeace but said it was unaware that Quiros had hacked into the computer of the group’s former head of campaigns for France, Yannick Jadot, in 2006.
Greenpeace’s anti-nuclear campaigning regularly targets EDF, which runs France’s network of 58 electricity-producing nuclear reactors.
Two former EDF executives responsible for security at the group were also found guilty.
