Sofia court of appeal has rejected claims that Bulgarian pharmaceutical company Sopharma was responsible for a doping scandal that led to three Bulgarian weightlifters being stripped of medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

On May 30 2008 Sopharma published a statement on its website citing the court's decision to reject accusations from the Bulgarian Olympic Committee (BOC), the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation (BWF) and a group of individuals.

The scandal broke after weightlifters Isabela Rifatova, Ivan Ivanov and Sevdalin Minchev were tested positive for a diuretic during the Olympics. Rifatova won the gold in the 48kg category, Ivanov won a silver medal in the 56kg category, and Minchev won the bronze in the 62kg category. 

Bulgaria's national weightlifting coach, Ivan Abadjiev, resigned after he admitted administering the drug Orocetam to the athletes.  He claimed he was unaware that one of the drug's components was the banned diuretic furosemide.

Later, both the BOC and BWF filed a claim against Sopharma, Orocetam's producer, notwithstanding the fact that medicine manufacturers in Bulgaria are not required to list any component in a drug that accounts for less than 0.1 per cent.

In this case of Orocetam the trace of the substance was about 0.003 per cent or less.

Furthermore, the court statement quoted by Sopharma said that Orocetam could be used only on a doctor's prescription. The athletes in question did not possess such a prescription.

Orocetam is designed to induce brain rehabilitation during and after illness. It supposedly improves the flow of blood to the brain and enhances mental concentration.

The Sydney doping scandal had an extremely negative impact on Bulgaria's reputation as a sporting nation.

It was not the first time Bulgarian athletes were caught using banned substances during a major sport event. At the summer Olympics in Seoul in 1988 two Bulgarian weightlifters, Mitko Grablev and Angel Genchev, were stripped of their gold medals after being found guilty of doping. Abadjiev was the coach in both cases.