(Washington) A committee of the American Congress has asked the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Chinese swimmers who tested positive in 2021 but were not sanctioned, a case which is shaking up global anti-doping two months before the Paris Olympic Games.
The House Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in a letter dated Tuesday asks the FBI to use the Rodchenkov Act to investigate the 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive but not sanctioned in 2021, which plunged the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in turmoil.
The Rodchenkov Act, passed in December 2020, allows the United States to prosecute all people, regardless of their nationality, involved in an international doping system.
“This scandal raises serious legal, ethical and competitive questions and could constitute a broader state doping strategy by the People’s Republic of China intended to compete unfairly in the Olympic Games, as Russia has already done,” write elected representatives of the House of Representatives John Moolenaar (Republican) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (Democrat) in the letter.
For almost a month, WADA has been in turmoil after the New York Times and the German channel ARD revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive in early 2021 for trimetazidine – which can improve performance – and never sanctioned, a few months before the Tokyo Olympics.
The American anti-doping agency Usada accuses him of having covered up the affair.
“USADA is funded by the US government and that government currently has a cold relationship with the Chinese government. Could there be a link? », questioned the former president of the AMA, the Canadian Richard Pound, in the form of a counter-attack.
WADA is half funded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).