MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th December, 2019) The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) hopes that the cases of Russian athletes who were acquitted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2018 will be revised in light of revelations made during the study of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory data, the director of intelligence and investigations for WADA has told the ARD broadcaster.
In February 2018, CAS fully or partially acquitted 39 Russian athletes who had been accused of anti-doping rule violations at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in professor Richard McLaren's report on doping in Russian sports. Among the athletes were five Olympic champions and nine world champions.
In a fresh interview with the German broadcaster, Gunter Younger said that a former employee of the Moscow lab had been called as a witness by the defense of the Russian athletes in CAS. Meanwhile, the recent study of the lab data revealed that this person had been involved in possible manipulation of samples and therefore could not be a reliable witness, according to Younger.
"One of the lab's experts was a key witness ... [at CAS hearings]. However, we managed to discover that some of his emails had been deleted from publications on the [internal lab] forum. We managed to recover them and understand where he made changes," Younger said.
According to the investigations director, WADA will send a letter the International Olympic Committee to say that an important witness was involved in the manipulation of laboratory data.
"I think that since new evidence has emerged, the cases against Russian athletes will definitely be reopened," he added.
On December 9, WADA unanimously voted to ban Russia from participating in and hosting any major sporting events as punishment for what it said were serious manipulations and deletions of data in athlete test results under WADA investigation.
