Liability for Violation of Anti-doping Rules in Russia: Issues and Prospects

Abstract

Since 2014 the issue of legal liability for violation of anti-doping rules had been thrown into sharp relief in Russia, when reports of the Canadian lawyer Richard MacLaren were published, which covered the cases of using manipulations with samples of Russian athletes. The consequences that nowadays manifest themselves in the Russian sports community are off to be comprehended, and the negative impact they have had on the results of our state's domestic and foreign policy will only have an effect after a few decades. The exclusion of national teams from participation in international competitions, the mass disqualification of high-class athletes, the ban on holding of international competitions in Russia is not a complete list of measures applied to the Russia by international sports organizations. The state is trying to level out the situation and one of the anti-crisis areas of focus is the revision of the anti-doping national doctrine and changes of the Russian legislation aimed at upgrading of liability not only for the use of doping in sports, but also for encouraging such use, distribution of prohibited drugs among athletes and coaches. By virtue of these circumstances, the issue of the legal liability of athletes, coaches and other persons for violating of anti-doping rules appears to be particularly relevant. For resolution of the above-mentioned problems, firstly, it is necessary to determine the types of legal liability for doping, to determine the subjects of such liability, to investigate the types and conditions of the application of sanctions for such violations, as well as the established rules for appealing punishing court rulings. Notable in this matter is the fact that the anti-doping program has an international background and the main acts that regulate the researched group of public relations are international acts (conventions and codes) that take precedence over Russian legal acts, due to the ratification of the specified international conventions by our state. The analysis will identify gaps in the doping legislation and determine the prospects and directions for its development and improvement. In process of research scholar methods were implemented: historical, system-structural, logical and dialectical (general scholar methods), as well as formal legal, comparative, legal dogmatic and other special methods. At the end of the article it is proposed changes to the Russian legislation.