MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is well within its rights to strip the United States of hosting the 2028 Olympics because its government meddled in the process of imposing sanctions on foreign athletes, Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev told TASS on Thursday.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code is set to be reviewed this month. This will mark the first time that WADA has filed an appeal with the Independent Compliance Court. The appeal comes in connection with the situation regarding the doping samples of Chinese swimmers.

"The government interfered in the process of sanctions against foreign athletes," the Russian sports minister said in an interview with TASS. "All of this obviously got out of hand."

"In line with WADA’s regulations the global agency should simply ban the US anti-doping agency and the next scheduled Olympics should be relocated to another country," Degtyarev stated.

The US city of Los Angeles is set to host the 2028 Olympics, Italian cities Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo will host the 2026 Winter Olympics and Australia’s Brisbane will be home to the 2032 Summer Games.

"Remember that the FBI directly intervened by launching criminal cases against Chinese athletes. There was no need to resort to the 'Rodchenkov Act' as everything was already on the table. We will see what comes next," the Russian sports minister added.

On April 21, The New York Times daily reported that 23 top Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance, the drug trimetazidine (TMZ), seven months prior to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) later said that it never punished the Chinese athletes because it could not refute information from the China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) that the athletes had been exposed to the prohibited substance inadvertently.

At that time, the CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, accused the global anti-doping body and China’s anti-doping regulator of deliberately concealing the positive test results.

The Chinese side acknowledged that the swimmers had ingested the banned drug unwittingly and in tiny amounts and that this warranted no action against them, the NYT said. A probe by the Chinese antidoping regulator showed that contamination might have been the source of TMZ.

Early last month, Xinhua news agency reported citing an independent prosecutor’s report, that "The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) did not show ‘favoritism or deference, or in any way favored’ the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) due to food contamination in 2021."

According to the Chinese news agency, "WADA held an online extraordinary Executive meeting on Tuesday [July 9] in Montreal discussing the interim report delivered by Independent Prosecutor Eric Cottier, regarding his review of WADA's handling of the China Anti-Doping Agency's (CHINADA's) no-fault contamination case involving 23 swimmers from China in 2021… In the report, Cottier concluded that WADA had been unbiased and reasonable in handling the case."