Cameron, the prime minister, in return for donations of £250,000. Cruddas resigned several hours later. Cameron said: "What happened was completely unacceptable. This is not the way we raise money in the Conservative Party." In January 2013, the seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong confessed to having used performance-enhancing drugs during each of his Tour victories. The confession ended years of denials about allegations of cheating during most of the cyclist's professional career. The Sunday Times chief sports writer David Walsh had spent over a decade investigating Armstrong, his team and the systematic doping rife in the sport. The newspaper was forced to pay Armstrong £300,000 in damages in 2006 after he sued it for libel. Following Armstrong's lifelong ban (and subsequent televised confession) The Sunday Times said it would sue him to recover the damages, plus interest and costs, for the original proceedings which it called "baseless and fraudulent". In June 2014, the Insight team at The Sunday Times published a front-page story "Plot to buy the World Cup" that detailed how Qatar used secret slush funds to make dozens of payments totalling more than $5m to senior officials at FIFA to ensure the country won enough votes to secure hosting rights to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The revelation prompted calls for Qatar to be stripped of hosting the World Cup. The reporting by Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake won numerous awards, including the Paul Foot Award. It also formed the basis for the book by Calvert and Blake, published by Simon & Schuster, The Ugly Game. In June 2015, The Sunday Times ran a lead front article titled "British spies betrayed to Russians and Chinese". The article was controversial because it contained numerous unlikely and unsubstantiated claims. Shortly after publication parts of the online version of the article were changed quietly by the newspaper. The article appeared to be an attempt to smear the American whistleblower Edward Snowden, thus fuelling further doubt as to its independent editorship. In August 2019, The Sunday Times received the leaked Operation Yellowhammer file about preparations for a "no deal" Brexit. In April 2020, an investigation by The Sunday Times Insight team revealed Prime Minister Boris Johnson had skipped five COBR meetings in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The investigation suggested that the British government underestimated the threat of the virus and failed to adequately