LAUSANNE:The hearing in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) arbitration procedure between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) will take place from 2-5 November 2-5 with strict measures due to the current sanitary situation.
In light of the travel restrictions and sanitary measures in place in Switzerland and in the Canton of Vaud due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the hearing will take place in a secured location in Lausanne, in a mixed format with the parties, legal representatives and expert witnesses attending either in-person or by video-conference.
The hearing will not be public. For the above reasons, in-person access is strictly reserved to persons directly involved in the case. There will be no access for outside persons and no media briefings or press conferences will be organised by the CAS. The procedure is being conducted by an Arbitral Panel composed of Judge Mark L. Williams, S.C. (Australia), President, Prof. Luigi Fumagalli (Italy) and Dr. Hamid G. Gharavi (France / Iran) (CoArbitrators).
At the conclusion of the hearing on 5 November 2020, the Panel will commence its deliberations and prepare the Arbitral Award. Accordingly, the decision will not be announced when the hearing concludes, but at a later date. A short statement will be issued by the CAS to confirm that the hearing has concluded. Background In January 2017, WADA issued reinstatement guidelines which set out a number of requirements that RUSADA had to meet in order to be reinstated as a compliant Signatory to the WADA Code.
While some requirements were met, WADA alleges that others were not. Nevertheless, on 20 September 2018, WADA reinstated RUSADA with immediate effect, but with post-reinstatement conditions, namely that specific data extracted from the Moscow Laboratory (i.e. the “LIMS data”) and certain athlete doing-control samples be turned over for full and complete examination and re-analysis by WADA, failing which the WADA Compliance Review Committee (WADA CRC) would address such non-compliance in accordance with the terms of the International Standard for Code Compliance by Signatories (WADA ISCCS).