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Russian sports minister denies covering up positive doping tests

MOSCOW - Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko on Thursday denied allegations in a German documentary that he intervened to conceal a soccer player’s positive drug test, dismissing the report as “laughable” and “implausible.”

The documentary, aired Wednesday night by German broadcaster ARD, showed what it said were Mutko’s initials on a document as proof that the minister helped to cover up a positive test of an unidentified player of the Krasnodar soccer team.

“The initials could be somebody else’s,” Mutko said in comments carried by the Tass news agency. “Thousands of people use me as a reference.