Berlin (AFP)
Director of Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada), Yuri Ganous, believes in voluntary manipulation of data from Moscow laboratory handed over to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and expects "very harsh" sanctions, a- he said Wednesday in an interview to the German weekly Der Spiegel.
"The changes in the data are so big and significant, that all this is not a coincidence," said Ganous, named in 2017 at the head of Rusada in order to restore its credibility after the revelation of a doping system involving many wheels of the Russian state.
The communication of these data by Russia, at the beginning of the year, had initially allowed to emerge in part from the crisis caused by the vast scandal over an institutional doping system that has plagued the country between 2011 and 2015.
But at the end of September, WADA had given Russia three weeks to explain the "inconsistencies" found in the electronic data of the former Moscow laboratory, which suggested a manipulation, including the erasure of positive controls.
According to a statement issued by WADA on Wednesday, Moscow has responded to about thirty requests for explanations and "forensic experts" will now look at the Russian answers.
For Ganous, "these are not erased data packets, but they have been modified or backdated in some places, someone has tried to hide massively information, it could also be names of athletes", he explains to Spiegel.
He said the changes are not just about the distant past, but may have been done recently. "We are talking about months, the last changes go back to the period December 2018 and January 2019", details the director of Rusada.
"The sanctions are going to be very tough, because this is not the first time Russia has broken the rules, Russia's participation in Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 is at stake, at least," he warns.
© 2019 AFP