MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. The Compliance Review Committee (CRC) of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) recognized the efficiency of Russa’s anti-doping body RUSADA, the WADA press service said.
On Monday, CRC recommended the organization’s Executive Committee to bar Russia from taking part in international competitions for four years, the WADA press service said.
At the same time, the WADA statement acknowledges that "the evidence (including from WADA's recent audits of RUSADA's operations) indicates that RUSADA’s work is effective in contributing to the fight against doping in Russian sport, and that it is working productively in cooperation with other Anti-Doping Organizations, including in investigations within Russia."
Therefore, the CRC does not recommend any special monitoring or supervision or takeover of RUSADA's anti-doping activities during the four-year period.
However, one of the conditions of RUSADA’s future reinstatement is that no outside pressure is exerted on RUSADA during the four-year period and the Russian watchdog’s independence is respected.
At the same time, RUSADA was obliged pay a fine to WADA of 10% of its 2019 income or $100,000 (whichever is lower), due to the Moscow Lab data issue. This is the maximum fine available under the rules.
A RUSADA deputy director general, Margarita Pakhnotskaya, told TASS that WADA’s statement recognizes the efficiency of the Russian anti-doping watchdog’s work.
"Today, the fact that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s work is efficient and highly professional and conducts the necessary anti-doping policies in the country is evident," Pakhnotskaya said. "This enables Russian athletes to take part in international competitions. This fact is clearly reflected in the latest recommendations of the Compliance Review Committee."
"In line with those recommendations, we retain all procedural and operative functions of the national anti-doping agency," she added.
However, the RUSADA official said the Russian agency did not received from WADA the full list of athletes "whose data was missing in the database that was amended."
WADA announced on September 23 that it had initiated a probe into the compliance status of RUSADA 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. The database contains information on athletes, who were tested for doping violations between 2012 and 2015.
New York Times reported on Monday that WADA identified the individuals whose data was deleted from the database, handed over by the Russian side.
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).
Although WADA does not believe that RUSADA played a role in those database inconsistencies, its sanctions against the Russian sports can be imposed only through revoking the compliance status of the national anti-doping agency. If RUSADA is once again designated non-compliant, Russian athletes will be barred from competing at major international events under the Russian flag and the country will lose its right to host important sporting competitions.