The only person held legally responsible for the team of basketball cheats who faked their way to Paralympic gold at Sydney 2000 now denies he knew anything about it. Speaking for the first time since his conviction in 2013, he says the accusations against him were "absurd and unfounded".
It's described by some as the worst example of cheating in sporting history. After Spain's intellectual disability basketball team won gold at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, it emerged that just two out of the squad of 12 players genuinely had a disability.
The scandal led to a total ban on athletes with an intellectual disability from the 2004 and 2008 Paralympics, destroying the careers of thousands of sportspeople around the world.
The man found by a Spanish court to have "devised and executed" the plot to recruit talented young non-disabled basketball players was Fernando Martín Vicente, then president of the Spanish Sports Federation for People with Intellectual Disability (Feddi) and vice-president of the Spanish Paralympic Committee.
When he accepted responsibility for the fraud and a fine of 5,400 euros (£4,600), charges were dropped against 18 other defendants, including the 10 fake Paralympians.
- Listen to the last episode of The Fake Paralympians on the MXY NEWS Service on Tuesday 21 September (click here for transmission times)
- Or listen online to episodes one to five
But in his first public statement on the scandal since court proceedings in 2013, Fernando Martín Vicente has written the MXY a three-page letter in which he denies having had any involvement.
"How was it done? Who encouraged it? What doctors or professionals lent themselves to such a thing? Sincerely, I don't know," he says.
He says he took the rap as the president of Feddi but adds that his record in pioneering learning-disability sport after his daughter was diagnosed with a severe intellectual disability as a baby, shows how "absurd and unfounded" the accusations against him were.
It's widely accepted that it was thanks to Fernando Martín Vicente that events for intellectually disabled athletes were introduced at the Atlanta 1996 Paralympic Games and expanded in Sydney 2000.
However, Miguel Sagarra, the secretary-general of the Spanish Paralympic Committee who led an investigation into the cheating in 2000, rejects Fernando Martín Vicente's attempts to deflect the blame.
"Impossible," he says. "Anyone who knows Fernando Martín would say it is 100% impossible that something of this relevance would have taken place without his knowledge."
He adds: "The accusation was very well-founded. The judge in his final statement was saying that everything was done under the orders and the instruction of Fernando Martín."
And he says that Fernando Martín Vicente's record as a champion of intellectual disability sport is "not relevant" to the question of his guilt or innocence.