The Ministry Of Youth And Sports Pays Off LADI Arrears To Qatar Laboratories In The Value Of IDR 300 Million

Illustration - Minister of Youth and Sports Zainudin Amali (Photo: Screenshot of Youtube voidotid)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Youth and Sports (Kemenpora) has paid off the arrears of the Indonesian Anti-Doping Agency (LADI) bill to the Qatar Anti-Doping Lab (ADL).

The payment of the bill is one of a number of points resulting from a coordination meeting on Thursday, October 21 conducted by LADI together with a number of other stakeholders, including the Ministry of Youth and Sports, in accelerating the settlement of sanctions from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

In a written statement, the arrears of LADI bills to Qatar ADL from 2017 amounted to 21.220 dollars (approximately IDR 300 million).

"This was only known by the new LADI management when they reviewed the MoU with Qatar ADL," said LADI Deputy General Chair Rheza Maulana, as reported by Antara, Friday.

Based on the notes from the meeting, the Ministry of Youth and Sports said that even though the arrears of bills to Qatar ADL were paid, the investigation process regarding the arrears of bills still needed to be carried out so that the party responsible for the problem would know.

In addition, the Ministry of Youth and Sports also requested transparency of information related to letters and electronic mail sent by WADA to LADI to make it easier for the Ministry of Youth and Sports to resolve pending matters as soon as possible.

Based on the information, the Ministry of Youth and Sports has paid the payment.

Previously in an official statement, Secretary-General of the Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI) Ferry J Kono who was included in the WADA Sanctions Relief Acceleration Team Task Force said that in the results of a temporary investigation, 24 pending matters were found that needed to be met by LADI, including arrears in the cost of testing doping samples to laboratories in Qatar.

"We cannot mention the details, but in general it concerns administrative and technical matters. We encourage LADI to resolve pending matters in order to obtain compliance status as soon as possible," said Ferry in a KOI press release, Thursday.

“One of the pending matters concerns the arrears of fees to the Qatar laboratory. Why there are arrears, we are still investigating. However, this situation is urgent, so the government has agreed to pay first, while the investigation continues and LADI completes technical matters that need to be resolved," he added.

Indonesia currently does not have an anti-doping laboratory that meets the standards so it still needs to send samples abroad, including Qatar.