LONDON (Reuters) - Tamas Ajan, the former head of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), and Nicu Vlad, the IWF’s former vice-president have been banned from the sport for life for covering up doping offences, the International Testing Agency (ITA) said on Thursday.
Hungarian Ajan, who has denied wrongdoing, and Romanian Vlad were charged with “complicity and tampering” in regard to doping offences by the ITA in June last year.
The duo were given lifetime bans by the Court of Arbitration for Sport for “covering up, delaying and obstructing results management for certain athletes that committed anti-doping rule violations (ADRVs),” the ITA said in a statement.
The ITA, an independent organization which implements anti-doping programs for international federations, took over the IWF doping program in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics.
“The ITA investigated 146 unresolved cases over the 2009-2019 period that have been passed on to the ITA by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA),” the ITA said.
“During the ITA investigation, it transpired that some IWF and national member federation officials had themselves also committed ADRVs of complicity and tampering in relation to certain cases.”
Ajan and Vlad challenged the charges against them in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which sided with the ITA and issued lifetime bans to the duo.