Paris (AFP)
The executive committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency "is scheduled to meet on December 9" to evaluate the ongoing proceedings against Russian anti-doping agency Rusada, WADA said in a statement Monday.
This decision comes after a meeting on Sunday of the WADA Compliance Review Committee (CRC), which has the authority to recommend sanctions and will now "submit a formal recommendation" to be on the agenda of the meeting. December 9, is it indicated.
The announcement is part of the formal procedure initiated by WADA on 17 September following "inconsistencies" in the electronic data of the controls of the former Moscow laboratory, handed over at the beginning of year by Russia.
The CRC was to review a report from IT experts citing these inconsistencies and therefore decided to make a recommendation, which could lead to further sanctions.
In January 2019, the release of electronic data from the controls had made it possible to get out of the crisis provoked more than three years earlier by revelations about an institutional doping system that had raged in Russia between 2011 and 2015. These data were supposed to allow the AMA to lift the veil on what was happening in the Moscow laboratory at the time and open sanction proceedings against Russian sportsmen.
But, according to the boss of Russian anti-doping Yuri Ganous, his country is at the origin of manipulations to erase data of positive controls and protect spiked athletes.
In early November, the Russian Sports Ministry Pavel Kolobkov rejected the accusations and announced that Russia plans to send a delegation of 400 athletes to the Olympics next summer in Tokyo.
Russia has already been banned from several international competitions because of the institutional doping scandal. This is particularly the case since November 2015 in athletics, where only selections of "neutral" athletes, handpicked, are allowed, without Russian flag or anthem.
© 2019 AFP