As I understand it, whistle-blower cases are sealed until the feds decide whether to join. Either way, the defendant is notified at that time if the feds join or if the private party decides to go ahead. If the feds decline to join and the suit continues, the feds can jump in later if they think it is going well.
I don't think there is any reason to believe that the case has gone forward. Clearly the feds are not pursuing it now, because to win at least some law has to have been broken, and at the moment, the feds have declared that they aren't bringing charges.
Based on what we know, there's a simple reason that the case isn't going forward: Tailwind didn't defraud the USPS, and even if illegal acts were carried out during the contract, the USPS lost nothing. Their sponsorship worked out to the highest possible benefit of the USPS--the exposure of their brand could not have been better. It's hard to see where damages would lie.
Here in the Clinic, we have a persistent incorrect notion that the contract stipulated no doping. In fact it only stipulated that Tailwind must ensure that the rider contracts permitted the dismissal of riders found to be doping. If a rider was found to be doping, the contract require that "appropriate" action be taken. Additionally, there are two ways related to doping in which Tailwind could be deemed in default. Neither of these happened; no rider was found to be doping (if one had, "immediate action", again of an unspecified nature, needed to be taken), nor did any negative publicity arise related to doping or other morals related events. Of course the contract had a term, and it ended December 31, 2004. By definition, no default took place because neither party alleged such.
So there is no possibility of a successful civil action. Of course, we don't know what criminal activities may have taken place, although in my opinion, nothing credible has been suggested. Selling team bicycles is not a crime. Money laundering of course is, but paying for a "program" probably wasn't done so directly.
There also been a lot of talk about whether Armstrong was a director, or if he lied about his ownership. I think most of this talk stems from posters who aren't aware of the differences between large publicly held companies and small privately held companies. In a small private corporation, the investors typically get preferred stock, and the management/talent are granted common stock or more commonly options for common stock. Only the preferred stock holders have voting rights, and the votes are apportioned according to the investment percentage. I certainly don't know, but a good guess is that Thom Weisel held >51% of Tailwind, or controlled a parent shell corporation that held >51%. In that case, for nearly all decisions, excepting modifications to the corporate charter, he would hold complete power. Again, I don't know about Tailwind, but I do know about private corporations. Contrary to public companies, a board seat need not confer any power or knowledge of the operations.
Armstrong would likely have not invested (much) money, but he could easily have had options with an "earn out" provision. That is, his share of ownership might change depending on the level of profit in a given year, or on the value of Tailwind at the time of a liquidity event. These provisions are common, and so the question "what percentage do you own" is not directly answerable. I was involved in one such arrangement in which the formula for earn out was sufficiently complicated that about 2 hours was needed to explain it.
On a separate topic, it is hard for me to justify any sense that the rug was pulled out from under Novitsky. Take the Balco case, which has some parallels. The grand jury was empanelled soon after the raid on Balco-- about October of 2003. The athletes completed their testimony by the end of the year, and indictments against the 3 Balco guys and Anderson came out in early February. Somewhere between 4 and 5 months. And they all spent some time in the pokey. Compare that to the indictment of Bonds on (as I recall) 27 counts of various crimes. That grand jury needed the full 24 months to get out the indictments. I think the very long time the GJ spent was a predictor of the outcome-- tried for 3 counts of perjury and 1 of obstruction of justice. In spite of the reality that everyone knows that Bonds lied about whether he injected himself and whether he knew he was taking steroids, the government had a very difficult time demonstrating perjury. The point is that if an indictment takes as long as the one involving Armstrong was taking, the case isn't very provable. And a case that isn't shaping up very well, coupled with the shambles of the Bonds and Clemens cases, leads to dropping the investigation. Novitsky and company shouldn't be complaining about the decision; if they had a good case they could have brought it already--before someone else made the decision to quit. On the other hand, it must be immensely frustrating to Novitsky to be quite sure that laws were broken, and broken by someone for whom he undoubtedly has a personal distaste.
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