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Kuala Lumpur. A gold medal-winning Malaysian athlete who failed a drug test at the Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia has claimed a top athletics official arranged his supply of banned substances, a report said on Tuesday.

Mohammad Yunus Lasaleh, who won gold as part of his country’s 4X400m relay team at the games in November, said Malaysian Athletic Union deputy president Karim Ibrahim introduced him to a Bulgarian doctor who provided the drugs.

Yunus was told the pills “could help me win gold,” he told the The Star newspaper.

Two Malaysians -- Yunus and a bronze medal-winning Malaysian weightlifter whose identity has yet to be revealed -- tested positive for banned substances at the Games.

They both face likely two-year bans and loss of their medals.

The paper said Yunus, along with several coaches and athletes, submitted a sworn statement to the MAU claiming Karim had contacted Yunus in September and told him to meet with the Bulgarian, who was not identified.

Yunus told the paper he was provided with pills that he was told were vitamins, and also received injections two or three times a week.

“The doctor informed me that they were B complex shots for recovery after training,” Yunus said.

In November, the relay team was at first told they had not qualified for the games, but were later allowed to compete and pulled off a surprise win.

The paper said Karim is also alleged to have told six sprinters not to provide urine samples for doping tests as requested by the National Sports Institute in May of last year. It gave no further details.

It said 42 national athletes and 16 coaches on Monday handed a memorandum to MAU president Shahidan Kassim calling for Karim’s removal, but Shahidan told the paper that he could not “arbitrarily” remove someone.

Relevant Malaysian sports officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The last Malaysian athlete punished for doping was weightlifter Amirul Hamizan Ibrahim, who was banned in 2005 for two years after failing an out-of-competition test.

Agence France-Presse