House committee calls on DOJ, FBI to investigate doping by Chinese swimmers

The House select committee on China has asked the Justice Department and the FBI to open a formal investigation into reports that nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for a banned heart medication before the last Summer Olympics were allowed to compete after they were cleared by officials.

In a letter Tuesday, the House committee implored federal authorities to use their jurisdiction under the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, a law that allows U.S. prosecutors to clamp down on doping at international sporting events that feature Americans as athletes, even if the alleged illegal activity happened in a foreign country.

“This scandal raises serious legal, ethical, and competitive concerns and may constitute a broader state-sponsored strategy by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to unfairly compete at the Olympic Games in ways Russia has previously done,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and the panel’s ranking member, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., said in the letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The letter cites a recent New York Times investigation concerning 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for trimetazidine, a heart medication banned by doping regulators, months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The Times reported that the swimmers were allowed to compete after Chinese officials authorized them and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) declined to intervene. (NBC News has not independently confirmed the reporting.)

Chinese government officials and WADA have forcefully pushed back on the allegations.

In a news briefing in Beijing on April 22, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin blasted the “false information and reporting.” He said China’s Anti-Doping Agency concluded in 2021 that the swimmers could compete after finding they had “ingested the substance unwittingly from tainted food.” He insisted “the Chinese government has a zero-tolerance attitude toward doping.”

In a statement from April 20, WADA said it was notified of China’s findings in June 2021 and then “carefully reviewed the decision” over a period of weeks, a process that included collecting scientific information on the substance and consulting with scientific experts. “Ultimately, we concluded that there was no concrete basis to challenge the asserted contamination,” Olivier Rabin, WADA’s senior director of science and medicine, said in a statement.

Trimetazidine is not authorized in the U.S., but it is used in some countries to help prevent angina, a type of chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart. The drug could theoretically improve blood flow and help elite athletes perform for longer stretches of time.

Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi argue in their letter that it is “imperative to assess whether these alleged doping practices were state-sponsored, which could warrant further diplomatic measures by the United States and the international community. Furthermore, with less than 100 days until the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, understanding the full scope of the scandal is critical in ensuring our U.S. athletes are competing in a fair competition.”

The International Olympics Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

The lawmakers conclude their letter by requesting a briefing to “better understand the alleged doping by Chinese swimmers and the potential cover-up by Chinese authorities and international organizations.”

The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act is named for Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the Moscow anti-doping lab and a key whistleblower who exposed Russia’s alleged scheme to cheat in the 2014 Olympics. The act was signed into federal law by former President Donald Trump in December 2020.