I have more details than Vlad on this and I don't agree with him that there is reason to blame the Novikovs for this situation.
My posting to O-net yesterday follows:
I think international complaints are the best way to influence on the corrupt Russian orienteering federation (ROF). The big scoundrel in this scandal is by the way not only vice president of the ROF but also a member of the IOF mountainbike-O committee. The first thing to do must be to demand IOF to kick him out, otherwise this organization will lose all its credibility. He and his friends have been terrorizing ordinary Russian orienteers for at least a decade now.
A short summary of the role of this man (Aleksey R. Kuzmin) in this scandal:
1. As the responsible person in ROF, he received the requested whereabouts reports from the Novikov family in October last year (i.e. long before the deadline December 1)
2. However, he did not make sure they where submitted to IOF before February, this year!!! (He tries to defend himself on this matter, saying that the reports were written in Russian and not in English as supposed)
3. He did not send any formal written warnings to the Novikovs (as prescribed in the rules if a report is delayed) in spite of requests from the IOF Secretary General to do so.
4. After this, he put pressure on Valentin Novikov to try to misuse the IOF rules, and "retire" (!) temporary as "the only way to solve the problem".
5. He convinced the executive committee of ROF to exclude all Novikovs from the national team, "because of the risk for punishment from IOF/WADA". To motivate this, he claims that he has received a number of "foggy" answers from WADA on his requests to assess the risk for punishment. In fact, he never had any correspondence with anyone in WADA. He also showed them a letter (which was later attached to the official decision) from the "revision committee" in which he himself had made changes to make the situation look much worse for the Novikovs.
6. He conducts a massive information campaign on the forums/guestbooks of the most read Russian orienteering website
www.moscompass.ru where he, under a large amount of different aliases, except his real name (I have checked the IP-addresses), tries to simulate public support for his views in the case.