The bipartisan request for a criminal inquiry relies on a law that gives the Justice Department the power to prosecute doping offenses that do not occur in the United States.
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Zhang Yufei, competing in the Olympic Games at Tokyo, tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug months earlier.
The House select committee on China has asked the Justice Department and F.B.I. to investigate reports that Chinese authorities covered up positive doping tests for nearly half the swim team it sent to the last Olympic Games and that the global antidoping regulator failed to take action.
In a letter sent late Tuesday, the committee asked that the authorities use a law passed in 2020 in the wake of another doping scandal, involving Russia, that gives the Justice Department the power to criminally prosecute those who help athletes dope at international competitions, regardless of whether the offenses occur on American soil.
“This scandal raises serious legal, ethical and competitive concerns and may constitute a broader state-sponsored strategy by the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) to unfairly compete at the Olympic Games in ways Russia has previously done,” the panel’s chairman, Representative John Moolenaar, Republican of Michigan, and its senior Democrat, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray.
The letter could put additional political pressure on the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation to ratchet up scrutiny of China’s athletic program and the organization responsible for policing the use of banned performance enhancers, the World Anti-Doping Agency, just two months before the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.
The New York Times reported last month that 23 elite Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the same powerful drug months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games but were allowed to compete after Chinese officials secretly cleared them of wrongdoing and the antidoping agency, known as WADA, declined take action.
The swimmers went on to win medals in five events at the 2021 games, including three gold. Several of the swimmers are favorites to win medals at the Paris Olympics in July.
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Source: nytimes.com
