Australian Rugby Union CEO Bill Pulver. (Photo: Stefan Postles, Getty) Story Highlights Report finds doping is 'widespread' 
 
 Organized-crime syndicates involved 
 
 No individuals named 
 
 A lengthy investigation into the use of doping in Australian sports has found that the practice is "widespread." 
 
 The Australian Crime Commission issued a report Thursday in which it said "peptides and hormones are being used by professional athletes in Australia, facilitated by sports scientists, high-performance coaches and sports staff." 
 
 The commission, which did not name specific individuals, said that the drugs were being used by multiple players across different sports disciplines and that in some instances the banned substances were being supplied though the help of organized-crime groups. 
 
 "Organized crime has been found to have a tangible and expanding footprint in this market," the commission concluded. 
 
 "There are clear parallels between what has been discovered in Australia and the USADA investigation into Lance Armstrong," the report said. "The difference is that the Australian threat is current, crosses sporting codes and is evolving." 
 
 MORE: FDA investigating aspects related to Armstrong case 
 
 The Australian Football League (Aussie Rules) and the National Rugby League are the two sports "codes" that are under the most scrutiny. 
 
 "This is not a black day in Australian sport, this is the blackest day in Australian sport," said Richard Ings, the former head of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, speaking on Australia's ABC TV. ||||| The Russian Sports Ministry acknowledged doping problems in a statement last week after Dr. Rodchenkov’s claims were published in The Times. It did not specify what those problems were. Then, writing in The Sunday Times, a British newspaper, the Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said that Russian officials, coaches and athletes had made “serious mistakes,” but he stopped short of outlining them or admitting to any state involvement. 
 
 In their inquiry, United States prosecutors are expected to scrutinize anyone who might have facilitated unclean competition in the United States or used the United States banking system to conduct a doping program. 
 
 Elite Russian athletes have competed in several major sporting events in the United States, like the Boston Marathon and international bobsled and skeleton championships in Lake Placid, N.Y. 
 
 The inquiry, which originated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would have to clear several hurdles before charges could be filed. Even if prosecutors are able to establish jurisdiction, securing the cooperation of Russian authorities in pursuing evidence and witnesses — and in ultimately delivering any charged defendants to the United States — would be all but impossible. 
 
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 It is rare for the United States government to take on sports doping cases. In February 2012, the United States attorney in Los Angeles, André Birotte Jr., dropped a two-year criminal investigation into Lance Armstrong and his Postal Service cycling team that had explored whether Mr. Armstrong and others defrauded sponsors by operating a doping program. 
 
 The United States Anti-Doping Agency, not a government entity, pursued the case. Mr. Armstrong was ultimately stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and barred from cycling for life for what Usada called “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” 
 
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 But prosecutors for the Eastern District in Brooklyn have taken on high-profile sports corruption cases before. For several years, the office has been investigating corruption within FIFA, world soccer’s governing body. That case, announced last May, has so far resulted in charges against 40 soccer officials and business executives, as well as two corporations. More than a third have pleaded guilty. 
 
 Highly international in scope, the FIFA case has implicated people of two dozen nationalities, and it has required the cooperation of various foreign authorities — especially the Swiss — in making arrests, ruling on extradition requests and sharing information about bank transactions. 
 
 While the Eastern District’s FIFA investigation and Russian doping investigation are independent inquiries, there is an overlap between the two matters. Prosecutors from the business and securities fraud section and the organized crime division are involved in both, and certain public figures have overlapping ties to Russian sports and global soccer. 
 
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 Mr. Mutko, Russia’s minister of sport, is a member of FIFA’s ruling council, a position he has held since 2009. He was appointed in 2008 to his current role in Russian government by President Vladimir V. Putin. 
 
 In his account to The Times, Dr. Rodchenkov, who oversaw Russia’s antidoping lab in Moscow for a decade, said he often took direct orders from Mr. Mutko’s deputy, Yuri Nagornykh, especially leading up to the Sochi Olympics in 2014. In Sochi, Dr. Rodchenkov said, he staged an elaborate dark-of-night operation to destroy Russian athletes’ tainted urine samples on orders from the government. 
 
 In a news conference last Friday, Mr. Nagornykh disputed Dr. Rodchenkov’s claims. “There’s no doping program in Russian sport,” he said. “There was none and will be none.” 
 
 In the wake of the report last fall, which cast shadows on not just the Moscow laboratory but also Russia’s antidoping agency, Dr. Rodchenkov said that Mr. Mutko had summoned him to the sports ministry’s headquarters and requested his resignation. Dr. Rodchenkov fled to the United States, fearing for his safety, he said. 
 
 Bradley D. Simon, a criminal defense lawyer of Simon and Partners in New York, confirmed that he was representing Dr. Rodchenkov but declined to comment on the Justice Department investigation. 
 
 Currently living in Los Angeles, Dr. Rodchenkov, 57, has said he has no intention of returning to Russia. “I have no choice,” he said in a recent interview. “I am between two flames.”
– Australian sports are besieged by performance-enhancing drugs and organized crime, according to a year-long government investigation, reports the Wall Street Journal. The report didn't name names, but it indicated illegal hormones and other performance enhancers are widespread in Australian sports, facilitated by coaches and trainers. "The findings are shocking and will disgust Australian sports fans," said Australia's Justice and Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare. "It's cheating, but it's worse than that. It's cheating with the help of criminals." The probe also found criminal networks growing increasingly involved in Australian sports, partially because of the PEDs and partially because of the growing popularity of betting, especially in rugby and Australian rules football, with at least "one occasion" of match fixing. "This is not a black day in Australian sport, this is the blackest day in Australian sport," the former head of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority told USA Today.