Russia’s drug-testing laboratory in Moscow was provisionally suspended yesterday as the country also faced calls for it to be stripped of the IAAF World Junior Championships next year as pressure mounts over the biggest doping scandal for a generation.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) suspended the accreditation of the Moscow laboratory pending a disciplinary hearing after an independent commission revealed that 1,417 samples were deliberately destroyed on the orders of the lab’s director.

A Wada spokesman said: “We have provisionally suspended the laboratory. A disciplinary process will now be started and a three-person disciplinary panel will now be set up.”

Russia is facing a ban from the Rio 2016 Olympics and UK Athletics chairman Ed Warner has called for the country to be banned from international athletics competitions and stripped of hosting next year’s World Junior Championships in Kazan.

Warner said: “I am all for suspension until the systems in Russia are proved to be robust.

“The IAAF is meeting later this week to consider suspending Russia and my strong advice would be that you have got to do that.

“If you suspend the Russian athletics federation you then have to remove the World Junior Championships — cancel them and take them elsewhere.

“The worst thing would be for Russia to turn up at the World Indoor Championships in Oregon in March or to host the juniors and we find out that nothing has changed.”

The Wada report revealed senior anti-doping figures took cash to cover up positive tests, there was intimidation of officials and their families by undercover officers from the Russian secret service and athletes were given warning of when tests were to take place.

Dick Pound, chair of the independent commission that produced the report and a former Wada president, said Russia should be banned from next year’s Olympics and that there was suspicion over its performances which “sabotaged” the London 2012 Games where the country won 82 medals.