The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that it has indicted seven officers of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) with hacking.

The charges stem from a coordinated effort by the DOJ, the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The seven defendants were charged with computer hacking, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. The actors were allegedly attempting to delegitimize the status of athletic anti-doping officials and to distract the public from Russia’s own athletic doping problems. Russia suffered major publicity setbacks following exposition of its state-sponsored athletic doping activities during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Independent Person Report known as the “First McLaren Report.”

The defendants are “Aleksei Sergeyevich Morenets, 41, Evgenii Mikhaylovich, Serebriakov, 37, Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov, 32, Artem Andreyevich Malyshev, 30, and Dmitriy Sergeyevich Badin, 27, who were each assigned to Military Unit 26165, and Oleg Mikhaylovich Sotnikov, 46, and Alexey Valerevich Minin, 46, who were also GRU officers.” The GRU is an intelligence wing of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. 

The allegations date back to 2014, following the First McLaren Report. The defendants allegedly used wifi networks, such as those in hotels, to hack into the computer accounts of WADA officials during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, FIFA anti-doping conferences, and WADA summits in Switzerland. Other victims of the defendant’s alleged crimes include the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons , Westinghouse Electric Company and the Militaire Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, the Dutch defense intelligence service.