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Announced on Friday by the agency's founders,
Russia's Olympic and Paralympic committees, the dismissal of
RUSADA general director Yuri Ganus comes after the Olympic
Committee accused him of presiding over serious financial
violations. Ganus denies the allegations.
Ganus, who was named to the post in August 2017, has portrayed
the accusations against him as an attempt to undermine the
agency's efforts to rebuild international trust in Russia's
anti-doping system.
Russia has been rocked by doping scandals since a 2015 report
commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found
evidence of mass doping among its track and field athletes.
Ganus was appointed to head RUSADA as it was mounting a push to
be reinstated. The appointment of a new director had been a
condition for the agency's reinstatement.
RUSADA was suspended in 2015 in the wake of the
WADA-commissioned report on doping in athletics.
The agency was conditionally reinstated in September 2018, but
was declared non-compliant late last year after WADA found
Moscow had provided it with doctored laboratory data.
RUSADA has appealed against a four-year ban on Russian athletes
competing at major international sporting events under their
flag as punishment for that data alteration.
The case will be heard by the Lausanne-based Court of
Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in November.
(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Gennady Novik;
Editing by Toby Chopra and Angus MacSwan)
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