Inspectors at the World Anti-Doping Agency are considering recommending on Monday that the global regulator’s board once again ban Russia’s antidoping agency. The move would come days before the start of the world track and field championships in Qatar, and amid fears Russia manipulated athlete data provided to WADA earlier this year, according to two people familiar with the board’s plans.

Handing over the data from the Moscow laboratory that was at the center of a 2015 doping scandal had been a key requirement set by WADA when it lifted a three-year suspension of the Russia antidoping agency, known as Rusada, in 2018. The suspension had been imposed after WADA investigators found Russia had orchestrated a vast, state-sponsored doping scheme that tainted the Olympics and other major sports events.

Getting access to the Moscow laboratory that held the data — a crucial tool in determining the identities of hundreds of athletes who may have cheated across a raft of sports — had been a challenging and at times bruising experience for WADA. The agency faced heavy criticism from non-Russian athletes and other stakeholders for lifting Russia’s suspension, and for allowing it to once again certify on its own that its athletes were not using banned drugs, even as Russia had not fulfilled all the conditions of a road map it had agreed to follow.

Now questions have been raised about the validity of the data. WADA alluded to there being an issue in July, when it said its investigators were examining “some differences” between the data retrieved from the Moscow lab and a separate database provided to it by a whistle-blower in 2017.