A fund established so Paul Kimmage could fight a legal action by Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen is no longer available to the former pro rider turned journalist and author.
Paul Kimmage believes he will never again have access to the money in an account established to help pay his legal bills arising from being sued by former UCI president Hein Verbruggen and current president Pat McQuaid.
It emerged last month that one of the administrators of the account moved a reported $65,000 from it, apparently over fears he would be saddled with a tax bill linked to the initial raising of the cash in the so-called ‘Kimmage defence fund’.
The fund had been established late last year by websites nyvelocity.com and cyclismas.com. It was aimed at ensuring journalist Kimmage, who had by that stage lost his job with The Sunday Times, would be in a position to fight the legal action, which was subsequently discontinued/suspended.
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Verbruggen and McQuaid contended that Kimmage had defamed them when making accusations about their conduct relating to doping and the Lance Armstrong affair.
The fund reached $96,000 and when the action against Kimmage was suspended, he decided to use it to pursue the UCI officials. He lodged criminal and civil allegations against McQuaid and Verbruggen with the Swiss authorities. He gave donors the choice of having their donation returned and then a total of some $21,000 was spent on the action against McQuaid and Verbruggen.
However, at the beginning of May cyclismas editor Lesli Cohen discovered the site’s co-founder Aaron Brown had moved some $65,000 from the fund into another account.
Brown said at the time there was almost $65,000 left after PayPal charges and other monies already spent. He added if the money was released to Kimmage and then he, Brown, was saddled with a large tax bill connected to the fund, this would be a “massive challenge” for him.
He insisted if there remained money after any tax bill, Kimmage would be entitled to it for any legal costs that arose.
Speaking on the Irish Times’s new SecondCaptains sports podcast yesterday, Kimmage was not optimistic.
“I’m not sure we’re ever going to see that money again,” he told presenter Eoin McDevitt.
“We are trying to put some pressure on Aaron Brown, the individual who’s taking care, for want of a better phrase, of the money. But he is not cooperating with us in any way. I’d be doubtful if we’re ever going to see it again.”
“It’s massively, massively disappointing. Because again so many people gave money in good faith and for the money to be used in this way is unacceptable and disgraceful and I feel really bad because my name is being associated with this. I feel really bad about what’s happened. It’s awful, just awful.”
SecondCaptains also interviewed the man who is challenging Pat McQuaid in the upcoming UCI presidential election, Brian Cookson.
The British Cycling president said he believed the lack of any real conclusion to the Lance Armstrong affair was “less than ideal” and was one of the reasons why he was now challenging McQuaid.
He accepted progress had been made on doping and while acknowledging McQuaid had led that change, he believed the UCI’s communication was poor and that anti doping needed to be separated away from the world governing body.
Allegations around the UCI’s handling of the doping issue had not been answered to the satisfaction of agencies like WADA, and until that was settled cycling would continually be mired in the fall-out from the Armstrong affair.
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“The independent commission that was in the process of being set up over the winter was very, very problematic by all accounts," said Cookson.
"My view was that it became overly bureaucratic in the way that it’s been set up. They used the model of a British public inquiry, I’m not sure that’s entirely the right way of doing it.”
“Really, WADA and many others felt unhappy about it. There was no point in continuing with it.... if WADA and other key people had not accepted its findings; it would have been a pointless exercise.”
“So what we really have to do is set up something that does have the confidence and support of people like WADA and other key stakeholders on the international scene and people within the sport of cycling. And that’s not been done yet. We need to get that one put to bed for once and for all.”
As a member of the UCI’s management committee he said he accepted that he carried some responsibility for the failings of the UCI he was now highlighting. The reason why he was standing for election was because he wanted quicker progress.
While he had in the past voiced his concerns privately at UCI meetings, publicly he felt the need to represent the UCI’s standpoint on various issues; “to stick to the line or resign,” as he put it. But he had now decided to put his head “above the parapet” in challenging McQuaid and his style of running the UCI.
Cookson said he was disappointed with the content of the letter sent out by McQuaid to the national federations last week in which the Irishman suggested Russian and Polish interests in the sport of cycling were putting Cookson forward for election. McQuaid believed Cookson was a pawn.
“I don’t want to respond in kind,” Cookson told the SecondCaptains podcast.
“I don’t want to make this a McQuaid versus Cookson personality campaign. I guess it will be a bit. But to me, that letter is a clear example of the kind of thing that is alienating key stakeholders in our sport. Whatever happens in this campaign, I believe that we need to set a higher tone for cycling.... get away from these ceaseless personality conflicts.”
He said he had spoken to the Russian and Polish parties mentioned by McQuaid but had only contacted them in the context of contacting a large number of people around the world in the sport. He was sure McQuaid was also doing that as part of his own election campaign.
Cookson believed his record “speaks for itself” and he looked forward to competing in a democratic process where his record in British Cycling and his character would be judged.
Kimmage described as “encouraging” Cookson’s willingness to stand for election at this time, but also saw flaws with him as a candidate.
“He waffles a lot. He uses this term about communication to the outside world; that this is part of the real problem they (the UCI) have, an inability to communicate to the outside world. That’s the least of their problems. That is certainly an issue... but it’s way down the list.”
Kimmage said he would have preferred if Cookson had presented his manifesto at the same time as entering the race to be elected, believing it would have been easier to measure him as a candidate.
However, he said Cookson’s repeated mention of the UCI president’s office being “just down the corridor” from the association’s anti doping office captured a major problem in a nutshell.
He questioned Cookson’s tactic of trying to avoid being drawn into robust debate with McQuaid saying he needed to say publicly the sport was “a fucking mess” and be more forthright in his comments on McQuaid and explain to people clearly what he was going to do to “sort out” cycling.
McQuaid’s letter, said Kimmage, had a tone of “bickering and back fighting” that revealed the lengths he would go to to stay on in the UCI post.
He believed the mooted legal challenge to Swiss Cycling’s backing of McQuaid made the outcome of the Cycling Ireland EGM this Saturday very important; with delegates to vote for or against Cycling Ireland nominating McQuaid to contest the UCI election. Kimmage felt the backing by Cycling Ireland would perhaps in time prove to be the only avenue open to McQuaid to secure a nomination to run.
“That would be the sweetest thing ever, if ultimately it was the Irish cycling clubs that sent him packing,” he said of the EGM vote.
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