Microchip said:I always thought the hush money was Lance's! This is going to be good! It's getting better all the time.
Certain things haven't made sense until now about the Armstrong positives in 1999 and 2001.
Armstrong's payments to the UCI never coincided with the timing of the positive test dates, nor did the amounts seem large enough for a proper cover-up of a positive drug test on such a high-profile athlete. So it seems that with this alleged $500,000 payment directly to Verbruggen by Nike, the amount appears to be plausible enough to warrant the scenario of "protection money".
It also answers the question why Verbruggen, who is no longer the President of the UCI, is so intimately involved in sticking his face into all this instead of letting McQuaid handle it.