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The ITF also emphasized it had not known, prior to this year
when the drug was put on the banned list, that meldonium was in
common use by eastern European athletes.
Five-times grand slam winner Sharapova was cleared by the Court
of Arbitration for Sport to return to action in April after her
two-year suspension was reduced to 15 months on Tuesday.
The 29-year-old said then that other sports federations had been
more effective at communicating with athletes and hoped the ITF
would take note.
Her lawyer John Haggerty described the ITF's procedure for
relaying rule changes as a "night and day difference" to the
"vivid and direct warnings" from others.
"The ITF did not try to ban Ms. Sharapova for four years, as has
been suggested," the tennis governing body said. "The ITF stated
clearly that it was the responsibility of the Independent
Tribunal -- and subsequently the CAS Panel -- to determine what
the appropriate sanction should be.
"Ms. Sharapova has stated that the Independent Tribunal was ‘not
neutral’," it added.
"Ms. Sharapova’s legal team was given the opportunity to object
to the appointment of any member of that Tribunal in advance of
the hearing, and they agreed in writing that they had no such
objection."
The ITF believed it had taken appropriate steps to publicize
changes to the prohibited list and it was "not true" to say that
it was aware of widespread use of meldonium in Eastern Europe
and should have given specific notice.
"In fact, it was accepted by Ms. Sharapova in the hearing before
CAS that the ITF did not know before 2016 about the extent to
which meldonium was used by athletes from any region, or that
Ms. Sharapova herself was using meldonium," it said.
The ITF pointed out that the WADA monitoring program is
conducted anonymously and WADA "does not inform any anti-doping
organization about the prevalence of such use until it publishes
the results of the monitoring program."
It said that was May 2016 for the 2015 monitoring program.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Toby Davis)
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