Japan: Russia has three weeks to explain inconsistencies - WADA representative

W/S WADA meeting in process, Tokyo
SOT, James Fitzgerald, World Anti-Doping Agency Senior Manager, Media Relations and Communications: "One of the conditions of the reinstatements of Rusada, the Russian Anti-doping Agency, last year was that they had to provide authentic data from the Moscow laboratory. So the data was handed over to WADA investigators and since then in January when we got the data from laboratory, they've been undergoing a process of authentication and making sure that the data was all present and that it was authentic and hadn't been manipulated in any way. So, they found now that there are discrepancies between the data that was provided in January with the previous version of the database that had previously been given to WADA. Those discrepancies need to be accounted for. So, what happened last week, is that WADA has opened a compliance procedure against Rusada and has asked a number of questions. I think it's 30 questions of a very technical nature as to why there are inconsistencies between the two databases. We will now wait for Russia to come back with explanations and then we will take the process from there."
M/S Attendees
SOT, James Fitzgerald, World Anti-Doping Agency Senior Manager, Media Relations and Communications: "Rusada has three weeks to come back with an explanation for why there are inconsistencies in the data. At that point it will be examined by WADA investigators. So that may take a long time to examine. Or it might be a very short process. But at that point the investigators will issue a report to our independent compliance review committee. And the CRC will then investigate it further, look into it and if appropriate they will make a recommendation to the WADA executive committee to make a decision as a pretence to Rusada's compliance with the world anti-doping code."
W/S Panel
SOT, James Fitzgerald, World Anti-Doping Agency Senior Manager, Media Relations and Communications: "It's important to stress that there are 47 cases that WADA has developed and given to the appropriate international federations. Those 47 cases are not affected in any way by these inconsistencies. So those 47 cases will proceed as planned. The international federations will take those forward. And it's not affected in any way by what the latest developments are in regards to inconsistencies. It is also important to point it out yet again that last year's decision by the executive committee of WADA to reinstate Rusada under these strict conditions was exactly the right thing to do. Because if we didn't do that at that time we wouldn't have any data at this point. And even if we did and we found that the data had been manipulated, then we wouldn't be able to prosecute them under the strong legal framework that is now in place that wasn't in place the last time that Rusada was not compliant."
W/S WADA meeting hall
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