Greece's suspended weightlifting coach Christos Iakovou faced a disciplinary committee on Wednesday and emerged to tell reporters that he had simply "told the truth".

Iakovou appeared before the committee without his lawyer and said afterwards that he was prepared to face questioning as part of the judicial investigation as well.

"Whatever I have to say, I will tell the court when I am called to give evidence," he said.

"My father taught me to love sports, ancient Greece and to always tell the truth. That's what I did today: I told the truth."

Iakovou refused to answer journalists' questions but he is believed to have denied any part in the doping of Greek weightlifters after 11 of them tested positive for anabolic steroids.

Iakovou's lawyer has claimed that a firm in China has accepted responsibility for sending tainted food supplements to the national team.

A Larissa-based businessman, Panayiotis Katselos, revealed in an interview with local newspaper Eleftheria that he was the man who supplied Iakovou with the allegedly tainted food supplements.

Katselos said he met Iakovou four years ago and developed a close personal relationship with him.

The weightlifting coach is alleged to have recently asked Katselos to get hold of some amino acid tablets for him.

Katselos said he already imported food supplements from England through his company but decided to approach a company in China for the tablets in question as he believed he could get them at a better price.

Katselos claims he ordered three packages of amino acids (L-tyrosine) at a cost of about 15 euros from the company and that they arrived at his premises via courier. He insists that he sent the unopened packages straight to Iakovou.

When the businessman found out about the athletes failing their drugs test, he contacted the company in China for more information and received an e-mail reply in which the firm claimed that it had made a mistake and mixed the L-tyrosine with another substance.
Iakovou's lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos has submitted this e-mail, which appears to be from the Shanghai-based Auspure Life, as evidence that his client did no wrong.

Katselos told Eleftheria that he ordered the supplements from China simply because they were cheaper.

"This company was trustworthy, at least until it made this mistake and we got the results," he said. "It's a shame that because of one mistake the name of a legend like Christos Iakovou is being dragged through the mud.

"Aren't there occasions when you get a bad batch of milk or yoghurt from a company? Well, it's the same with food supplements. There's a chance you'll get a faulty batch."

Katselis added that he believes some weightlifters from the national team (three out of 14) did not test positive for banned substances because the batch of supplements he supplied was very small (1.5 kilos in total) and that not all the athletes got a chance to use them.