MOSCOW, November 23. /TASS/: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is likely to agree with recommendations of its Compliance Review Committee to strip the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) of its compliance status, RUSADA President Yuri Ganus told TASS on Saturday.
The WADA Compliance Review Committee recommended the world anti-doping body’s Executive Committee overnight to Saturday to strip RUSADA of its compliance status. The Committee's recommendations are based on the reports by the WADA Intelligence and Investigations team and by independent forensic experts. The reports relate to several inconsistencies found in the Moscow Laboratory data transferred to WADA, which the Committee examined at its meeting on November 17.
"The recommendation [to strip the compliance status] is predictable, this is juridical logic. We have the conditional compliance status. One of the conditions of maintaining the compliance status was not fulfilled and previously the Executive Committee agreed with recommendations in 100% cases, this is logical. Irrespective of the RUSADA level, irrespective of what we have done, there were criteria for maintaining the status and now we need to wait for a decision," Ganus said.
WADA announced on September 23 that it had initiated a probe into the compliance status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency with the Code of the world’s governing anti-doping body based on the inconsistencies reportedly discovered in the data from the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory.
Specialists from WADA were granted access to the database of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory in January this year and copied 24 terabytes of information on Russian athletes’ doping samples collected between 2012 and 2015. WADA experts finished their work to retrieve doping samples from the Moscow Lab on April 30 having collected 2,262 doping samples in 4,524 containers (Samples A and B).
The WADA Executive Committee reinstated the compliance status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) on September 20, 2018 on condition that WADA experts would be granted access before December 31, 2018 to doping samples at the Moscow Anti-Doping Lab, which was sealed off in connection with a federal investigation.
Russian athletes may be barred from international competitions, including the Olympic Games, if WADA slaps sanctions on the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. Russia may also not be allowed to host international competitions and nominate its representatives to posts in sports federations.
The WADA Executive Committee will pass its decision on RUSADA at its meeting on December 9.
