The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has expressed concern over the recommendation of the supervisory board of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) to fire CEO Yuri Ganus.
“WADA is concerned that RUSADA’s Supervisory Board has recommended the founders of RUSADA (the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and the Russian Paralympic Committee) to consider dismissing Yuri Ganus from his post,” a statement posted on the World Agency’s website on Wednesday, August 5 …
Earlier on Wednesday, RUSADA reported that the agency’s supervisory board recommended that the founders consider the possibility of dismissing Ganus from the post of general director. Before that, the supervisory board of RUSADA expressed no confidence in its CEO and his deputy Margarita Pakhnotskaya.
In early July, the Post-Truth Telegram channel published incriminating facts about Ganus’s abuse of office, corruption and misappropriation of funds. For 2018-2019, he could have appropriated about 110 million rubles for himself. He was also accused of falsifying signatures of counterparties, additional payments to the same employees for “combining” and spending 11 million dollars on taxi services.
According to TASS, Ganus called the publication a blow from ill-wishers and denied the accusations, citing an audit of financial statements conducted in those years.
Former financial director of RUSADA Viktor Bocharov told Izvestia that he found serious violations in the agency’s documents back in 2017. Then the agency’s management was subordinate to the WADA experts and fulfilled their instructions and requirements, ignoring the interests of Russian sports. In the absence of closing documents and signatures of counterparties, RUSADA requested budget funds from the Ministry of Finance and entered into contracts.
On July 14, the ROC published a report of the Finexpertiza audit company, which revealed violations in the financial and economic activities of RUSADA. The audit for 2018-2019 was initiated by the founders of the Russian anti-doping agency (ROC and the Russian Paralympic Committee) and conducted in the spring of 2020. The results of the audit were transferred to the RUSADA Supervisory Board for analysis of the identified violations and reactions within the authority of the organization.
The auditors found, among other things, taxi bills for 11 million rubles, which the anti-doping agency tried to partially hide, individual English lessons for Ganus at the expense of the organization, as well as the fact that he did not submit all reports on business trips to the accounting department. The facts of falsification of signatures of counterparties under civil agreements were established.
In response, RUSADA published a document clarifying all claims. However, the ROC sided with the auditors, noting that in its response, the anti-doping agency does not deny the falsification of signatures and other facts.