The Italian Olympic Committee's (CONI) anti-doping prosecutor
Ettore Torri has opened an investigation and will question
Cannavaro on Friday.
Cannavaro, who helped Italy win the World Cup in Berlin three
years ago, was already suspended for the country's World Cup
qualifier with Ireland on Saturday, but he is expected to join the
team for Wednesday's game against Cyprus.
It is not known when Cannavaro tested positive, but CONI said
Torri would hold a hearing with the defender and the physician
involved in the case.
The player requested an exemption after being treated in
hospital but did not receive it before he was dope tested and CONI
said that after the exemption request arrived it had written to the
player asking for a doctor's certificate.
"After an Italian player made a request for an exemption for
therapeutic reasons for medicine given in an emergency, CONI's
Therapeutic Exemption Committee requested via registered letter
that the Emergency Room doctor's certificate be added to the
documentation sent," CONI said on its website. "In the meantime,
the athlete was subjected to an anti-doping test and the result was
positive."
It is not the first time Cannavaro has been in trouble. In 2005,
a video was shown on Italian TV of the defender being injected with
a performance-enhancing substance the night before the 1999 UEFA
Cup final. The sequence was shot in a Moscow hotel room, shortly
before his Parma team beat Marseille 3-0 for the title.
The substance was Neoton, a creatine phosphate, that was not on
any banned lists in Italy at the time.