MONTREAL: The World Anti-Doping Agency, under fire over its aquiesence in the Chinese swimming doping scandal, has asked independent prosecutor Eric Cottier to conduct a thorough review of its handling of the matter.

Anger had erupted internationally – and notably from United States anti-doping directors – after WADA decided not to challenge on appeal a “contamination” let-off involving 23 positive doping cases.

Cottier is a former attorney-general of the Vaud canton in Switzerland. Previously he had been a public prosecutor and cantonal court judge. He is also a member of the board of the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, prosecutor extraordinary at federal level and a member of a working group at the Rome-based International Institute for the Unification of Private Law.

A WADA statement said: “The decision was taken with the unanimous support of the WADA Executive Committee . . . In recent days, WADA had received requests for such a review by a small number of its stakeholders.”

President Witold Bańka said: “WADA’s integrity and reputation is under attack. In the past few days, WADA has been unfairly accused of bias in favor of China by not appealing the CHINADA case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

“We continue to reject the false accusations and we are pleased to be able to put these questions into the hands of an experienced, respected and independent prosecutor. I thank the members of WADA’s Executive Committee for meeting at such short notice and for their support in this matter.”

WADA will shortly send a compliance audit team to China in order to assess the current state of its anti-doping programme as part of the Agency’s regular compliance monitoring program.

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