By Steve Almasy, (CNN) – The sports insurance company that paid Lance Armstrong more than $10 million in bonuses plans to file a lawsuit to recover its money, an attorney for SCA Promotions told CNN on Wednesday.
Jeffrey Tillotson said SCA has already asked the disgraced former cycling champ for the money back.
“We made our demand for the return of the money we paid him for winning the Tour de France races where the titles were stripped,” Jeffrey Tillotson told CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield. “Mr. Armstrong and his legal team have not complied with that demand.”
Tillotson said the suit, which has not been filed yet, will ask for the return of $12 million in bonus money paid for wins from 2002 to 2005 and for millions in legal costs and interest.
Armstrong sued SCA after it delayed his 2005 bonus payment and raised questions about allegations involving his use of performance enhancing drugs. Armstrong testified under oath in that case that he had never doped. SCA settled with Armstrong.
“But both he and his lawyers almost taunted us and said if we are ever stripped of those titles, we will give you the money back,” Tillotson said Wednesday. “We will simply ask him to finally live up to his word and give that money back.”
Tillotson said that Armstrong lied throughout his testimony, not just about whether he had blood doped or taken steroids.
“He lied about virtually everything. And we are going to ask the arbitration panel that heard that testimony to punish him and hold him accountable for it,” the attorney said.
Armstrong first admitted the use of performance enhancing drugs and blood doping during a January television interview with Oprah Winfrey, ending years of denial that he cheated during the prime years of his cycling career.
He was stripped of his Tour de France titles by international cycling’s governing body in October after a damning report by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accused him and his team of “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program” in cycling history.