WADA Legal Note on the CAS Award WADA v. RUSADA (CAS 2020/O/6689) / World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). - Montreal : WADA, 2021
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had published the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS’s) 186-page full reasoned decision regarding its 17 December 2020 ruling in favor of WADA to declare the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code for a period of two years and to impose a range of associated consequences. This publication, which was also made on the CAS website, is in keeping with Article 10.4.1 of the 2018 version of the International Standard for Code Compliance by Signatories (ISCCS).
Further to WADA’s media release of 17 December, the Agency has also drafted a legal note that it shares today, which outlines the background leading to the CAS proceedings, provides a summary of the parties’ key arguments, and summarizes the CAS decision.
This CAS decision relates specifically to the manipulation of Moscow Laboratory data by the Russian authorities before and while the data were being forensically copied by WADA’s Intelligence and Investigations Department in January 2019 as part of Operation LIMS. This manipulation was in clear contravention of critical criteria set by WADA’s Executive Committee when RUSADA was reinstated as compliant, under strict conditions, in September 2018.
The CAS decision does not relate to the broader Russian doping crisis dating back to 2014 before WADA was authorized to carry out investigations and before it had the proper legal basis to pursue this matter under the ISCCS.
