Releases
WADA refers compliance cases against the Nigerian and Venezuelan NADOs to Court of Arbitration for Sport
Please note that the ADO consequences documents have now been removed from the website.
Further to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA's) Executive Committee (ExCo) meeting of 17 November 2023 and subsequent update of 8 December 2023, WADA wishes to provide a further update regarding the ExCo’s decision to endorse the recommendations of WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) and allege the National Anti-Doping Organizations (NADOs) of Nigeria and Venezuela as non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code (Code).
The alleged non-compliance in the Nigeria case is due to the NADO still not addressing several critical requirements to its anti-doping program following an audit carried out by WADA in late 2022, while the Venezuelan NADO has not addressed a number of critical requirements that came from the Code Compliance Questionnaire exercise.
Under Article 9.3.1 of the International Standard for Code Compliance by Signatories (ISCCS), the NADOs had 21 days following the date of receipt of the formal notice of non-compliance to dispute WADA’s allegation of non-compliance, as well as the consequences and/or the reinstatement conditions proposed by the Agency.
Prior to that 21-day deadline, WADA received formal notification from the two NADOs that they disputed the allegations of non-compliance against them, as well as the proposed consequences. Accordingly, and in line with Article 24.1.7 of the Code, WADA now publicly announces that it filed the two separate requests for arbitration with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on 9 February 2024. As set out in Article 24.1.7, certain Signatories have the right to intervene in the CAS proceedings as a party whereas other persons may apply and be permitted to intervene under certain conditions. As per the same article, the notice of intervention or the application to intervene must be filed within 10 days of the publication of this notice.
The allegations of non-compliance and the consequences would not take effect until such time as CAS makes its ruling. Further details regarding the cases including, in particular, the consequences and reinstatement conditions can be found by clicking on their country name here: Nigeria and Venezuela.
