WADA provisionally suspends Bucharest anti-doping lab

(Reuters) - Romania's anti-doping laboratory in Bucharest has had its accreditation provisionally suspended due to non-compliance, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Thursday.

The suspension, which took effect on Wednesday, prohibits the Bucharest lab from carrying out any anti-doping activities, including all analyses of urine and blood samples, WADA said in a statement.
The suspension will remain in place pending disciplinary proceedings being carried out by an independent committee, which will make a recommendation to the Chair of the WADA Executive Committee regarding the status of the lab's WADA accreditation.
During the ban, samples that have not yet been analyzed by the facility must be sent to another WADA-accredited laboratory to "ensure continued high quality sample analysis, which also helps preserve athletes’ confidence in this process and of the wider anti-doping system".

(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto, editing by Ed Osmond)