Richard McLaren Report as Evidence of Anti-Doping Rule Violation by Russian Athletes

Anti-doping regulation is an institution of international sports law and represents a set of legal norms aimed at regulating public relations that develop when countering the use of doping at the international level. The 2003 World Anti-Doping Code regulates both types of anti-doping rule violations and, in essence, contains key questions of proving violations of these rules. Of course, any arbitration is a matter of fact. As a general rule, any party to a trial must prove the circumstances to which it refers, taking into account the burden of proof, the applicable standard and the criteria for evaluating evidence. By their nature, certain circumstances cannot be proven with a certain degree of certainty, and evidence can often be contradictory, unclear and challenged by the other side of the dispute. The standards of proof play the role of circumventing the impossibility of proving facts to the level of their reliability. The WADC provides an innovative standard of proof that provides for the “comfortable satisfaction” of the Panel of Arbitrators with the evidence presented. However, this standard, being a kind of substitute for judicial discretion, provides for the possibility of differentiated application depending on the actual circumstances of the dispute and the evidence presented. It is this approach to differentiating the standard of evidence that necessitates a clear definition of the evidentiary boundaries within which the parties are able to prove the essential circumstances of the case. The issues of admissibility and differentiation of evidence are most relevant when considering cases of anti-doping rule violation, since it is in this category of disputes that the resolution of these issues becomes crucial when the parties share and fulfill their burden of proof. The relevance of this study is due to the fact that in the period from 2016. and to date, the system of the Russian professional dispute and sports of the highest achievements has undergone unprecedented criticism and verification by the international sports community. The subsequent numerous suspension and deprivation of awards of Russian athletes, retroactive deprivation of the right to participate in major international sports competitions, all these consequences in a global sense were the result of the only study and conclusion of the Independent Person appointed by the IOC - Richard McLaren, pointing to the extensive multi-year system of doping in Russia sports. However, despite the extremely resonant significance and legal effect of this Report of the Independent, over the past four years, the legal qualifications of this Report and its compliance with WADC evidentiary criteria have not been adequately investigated in legal matters. The purpose of this work is to differentiate evidence that can be used in resolving anti-doping rule violation disputes, to establish evidence standards and principles for assessing evidence, as well as the legal qualification of the McLaren Report, as evidence of a violation of anti-doping rules by Russian athletes. In this paper, the theoretical and practical foundations of differentiating evidence used in resolving disputes about anti-doping rule violations are investigated. It also addresses criteria for evaluating evidence, the burden of proof, and approaches to evaluating evidence in dispute resolution at CAS. The authors also analyzed the legal nature of the McLaren Report and the possibility of qualifying it as evidence in terms of the sufficiency and admissibility of evidence presented to the CAS in the investigation of anti-doping rule violations.