“About the risk of being sanctioned (at the international level), we have not received any alert from the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency, for its acronym in English; AMA, in Spanish)”, Carolina Vilches, director, assured EL UNIVERSO on Wednesday. of Communication of the Ministry of Sport, when referring to a warning made by the National Anti-Doping Organization of Ecuador (Onade) to that State portfolio last Monday, via letter, regarding a possible disqualification from national sport.
In that letter, Minister Sebastián Palacios is reminded of “the payable obligations that Onade maintains with its officials and suppliers ($100,000), charged to the 2021 budget, given that the respective allocation was never transferred to it by that government agency, as was his duty.”
Dr. Janet Emén Sánchez, executive secretary of the Onade, emphasizes in her communication that “this new requirement is due, beyond the notable delay that this ministry registers in the transfer of the resources owed to the Onade, to the serious risk that sport of Ecuador may be suspended at the international level, if qualified as non-compliance (No compliance) in the evaluation that the World Anti-Doping Agency must carry out starting next month”.
Version of the Ministry of Sports
Vilches refutes that there is a possibility of punishment at the international level for the country’s sport, as Onade mentions. “Rather we have a very fluid relationship, we are in permanent contact with WADA. In fact, we have been invited to Ecuador to host the XI Latin American Anti-Doping Legal Seminar. And we have accepted”, declared the public official.
Regarding the funds that the National Anti-Doping Organization of Ecuador asks the Ministry of Sports to deliver (before the April 18 communication, Onade made the same request on March 14), Vilches acknowledged: “It is true that they did not We have delivered the money, but not for lack of management, but because the figure of creation of the Onade in the previous period was irregular, illegal”.
When Vilches refers to the “previous period,” he clarified that he is referring to the person who headed the Ministry of Sports during the government of Lenín Moreno: Andrea Sotomayor Andrade (in that presidential period, the Ministry of Sports lost that rank and in 2018 it became the Secretariat. From the possession of Guillermo Lasso as successor to Moreno, on May 24, 2021, he became a ministry again, in charge of Sebastián Palacios).
‘crucial mistake’
“The allocation of funds for the Onade had to be done at the beginning of 2021 due to the intense national sports activity, motivated in particular by the Tokyo Olympics. The then Sports Secretariat (in charge of Sotomayor) remembered its obligation to provide funds to the organization only in May 2021. It needed to issue a ministerial agreement as usual. It issued it on May 20, 2021, but the legal advisers of that agency made a crucial mistake: instead of putting ‘Agreement’ they put ‘Agreement No. 0323A’. The wise men of the bureaucracy did appear there to say that, being an agreement, it did not generate any obligation to deliver the funds that the ‘agreement’ set at $100,000, an insufficient amount, but an allocation in the end, which should serve to settle debts with laboratories and send the samples for analysis that are pending”, said Ricardo Vasconcellos Rosado in an opinion column published in this newspaper on October 10, 2021.
In her communication with EL UNIVERSO, via WhatsApp, Carolina Vilches reported: “This week we will comply with the president’s (Lasso) order that anti-doping control be handled by the COE (Ecuadorian Olympic Committee), as established by the World Anti-Doping Code, while the Onade Creation Law is issued. So we can deliver the resources. And of course we will assume the pending obligations that Onade has, verifying each value as it should. On the other hand, we are up to date with the annual payment to the World Anti-Doping Agency”. (D)
Source: Eluniverso
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