Vienna - An employee at Austria's anti-doping agency has become the target of a criminal probe for allegedly conducting tests for athletes to help them in their doping efforts, Vienna prosecutors said Thursday.

The investigation was set into motion by disgraced Austrian sports manager Stefan Matschiner, who said on German television earlier this month that he had received help from staff in more than one European laboratory accredited with the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Matschiner, the central figure in a wide-ranging doping scandal, told broadcaster ARD he bribed his collaborators in order to administer substances at the right time before competitions, and to avoid positive test results for his clients.

"There is a suspicion that that person conducted pre-tests," prosecution spokesman Gerhard Jarosch told the German Press Agency dpa, referring to the Austrian suspect.

The laboratory in Seibersdorf near Vienna said it was supporting the police's doping task force in its probe.

It was not clear yet whether the alleged pre-testing constitutes abetting doping according to national law, Jarosch said.

Another of Matschiner's former clients, disgraced triathlete Lisa Huetthaler, tried unsuccessfully to bribe a technician at Seibersdorf in 2008 to fudge her test results.

Matschiner was also the doping supplier and manager of cyclist Bernhard Kohl, whose third place in the 2008 Tour de France has been annulled. Kohl has implicated a number of other European athletes as fellow customers or collaborators. (dpa)