Vustria’s disgraced cyclist Bernhard Kohl has implicated other top cyclists, including Thomas Dekker and Pietro Caucchioli, in an ever-widening Austrian doping scandal, the daily Kurier reported on Sunday.

Kohl, who was banned last year after testing positive for EPO CERA, told Austrian investigators that Dekker and Caucchioli had used blood-doping centrifuges acquired by his former manager Stefan
Matschiner between 2006 and 2008, Kurier wrote, based on Kohl’s interrogation transcripts.

“He (Matschiner) told me later that cyclists Michael Boogerd, Thomas Dekker and Pietro Caucchioli had used the machines in exchange for a one-time payment,” Kohl apparently said.

Dekker, a two-time Dutch champion, and Caucchioli of Italy were both kept out of this year’s Tour de France after testing positive for doping. Boogerd retired in October 2007.

Kohl, best climber and third overall at last year’s Tour de France before he tested positive for EPO, came clean earlier this year following allegations against his former manager Matschiner.

Matschiner, who was arrested in March but later released, is seen as a key figure in the Austrian doping network and had close ties with former nordic skiing coach Walter Mayer – already involved in the 2006 Turin Olympics doping scandal – and the Viennese laboratory Humanplasma, which has repeatedly come under scrutiny for irregular practices.

Following the Olympic affair, blood supplies and equipment used for doping at Humanplasma were destroyed and Matschiner decided to buy centrifuges himself, Kurier reported.

“Stefan suggested that we buy machines for blood doping ourselves. Stefan got all the equipment directly from Humanplasma, or via this company,” it quoted Kohl as saying.

“He explained to me that Human Plasma would handle all the costs.”

Matschiner, who has admitted to performing irregular blood transfusions for Kohl, was also the manager of Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen, who was thrown off the race at the 2007 Tour de France following doping allegations.

Austria embarked on a major anti-doping clean-up in March with a series of arrests, including that of Mayer, cyclist Christof Kerschbaum and a Vienna pharmacist and doctor believed to have supplied banned substances to athletes.