First Case Won in CAS Ad Hoc Tokyo 2020

Clever Consult lawyers have achieved a sensational victory in a landmark case today. The CAS Ad Hoc Division panel issued an award to uphold Maxim Agapitov’s appeal against the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decision to withdraw his accreditation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Just prior to Tokyo2020 Summer Olympics, the IOC revoked the accreditation of Maxim Agapitov, Acting President of the European Weightlifting Federation (EWF), Executive Board member of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) and President of the Russian Weightlifting Federation (RWF). The reason for the IOC decision was the anti-doping rule violation committed by Mr. Agapitov 28 years ago, even before he won World Championship in fair and tough competition.

We successfully convinced the Panel of arbitrators that this violation should not be taken into account as a negative circumstancewith respect to our client. For many years, the weightlifting society have known Maxim Agapitov as a world-famous fierce fighter against doping, cheating and corruption – on both national and international levels.

The expert opinion of Canadian Professor Richard McLaren, who highly praised Mr. Agapitov’s efforts in his fight against the perennial corruption within the IWF, not only made a valuable contribution to this victorybut also,in many ways, made it possible.

“In this case, we have received great support from Professor Richard McLaren. Just as it happened lots of times with cases like that prior to the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, he provided his opinion. While Prof. McLaren’s judgements about Russian athletes tended to be quite negative, this time his highly favorable opinion was very helpful and made a big impression on the arbitrators,” Artem Patsev, Managing Partner of Clever Consult, said.

Anna Antseliovich, the head of sports practice of the legal group, adds, “The process of changing the IWF rules and regulations is under way and so is the reformation of the Federation’s structure. It is entirely possible that some of the arbitrators’ conclusions that underlie this decision might be taken into consideration for rule amending.”

We congratulate Maxim Agapitov and wish him successful work at the Olympic Games in Tokyo! We also wish Russian athletes best of luck and glorious victories at the Olympics!