Appeal Dropped By Floyd Landis

US cyclist Floyd Landis has dropped an appeal of a suspended sentence that was imposed by a French court over a shady espionage operation for hacking the computers of an anti-doping laboratory.

 

A one-year suspended jail sentence was received by Landis and his former trainer Arnie Barker in November 2011 after they were found guilty by a French court of fraudulently receiving documents from the official LNDD anti-doping agency. Landis appealed against the verdict though Barker accepted it. Two former EDF executives responsible for security of the group were also found guilty.

 

The disgraced cyclist who has previously admitted to using performance enhancing drugs and accused Lance Armstrong of using and promoting the use of performance enhancing drugs had been accused of using a hacker to get documents from the LNDD. Landis was stripped of his title as winner of the 2006 Tour de France. His lawyer Emilie Bailly said Landis had been "ruined by the different legal procedures and does not have the means" to come to France for facing the judges at Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris.

 

Last year, the court fined French state energy giant EDF 1.5 million euros ($2 million) in the same trial for using the consultancy to spy on environmental campaigners Greenpeace. It was admitted by EDF that it hired 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.