According to the Spanish police, Basso may have been one of Fuentes clients, under the code name of Birillo. And this Birillo is supposed to have performed a transfusion/blood manipulation on May 12, in the middle of the Giro.

Team CSC doctor, Joost de Maessener is very sceptical of this allegation, as it does not fit in with the tests that the team itself took during the Giro.

“There is nothing that happened during the Giro, that leads me to believe that Basso was doping,” Maesseneer explains in the Danish daily Jyllands Posten. “His blood was normal at the start of the race, and his Haematocrit fell a little toward the end of the race, which is normal. As far as I can see, he rode the race cleanly, although I can of course not know if he had been doing anything before the Giro [when the team doctors would not have been able to monitor Basso].”