San Francisco: A US grand jury in San Francisco indicted a top scientist, Patrick Arnold, for supplying Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative(BALCO) with the performance-enhancing drug known as 'the clear'.
The drug had led to a global scandal that tarnished some of top names in sports including track and field star Marion Jones and baseball's single-season home-run record holder Bonds.
Jones has categorically denied using steroids while Bonds' lawyer said that he could have inadvertently used BALCO substances provided by his trainer.
The indictment, coming just weeks after the head of BALCO and a man who was baseball superstar Barry Bonds' friend and personal trainer were sentenced to prison, shows the government has widened its focus in the scandal.
To date, the BALCO case had led to charges against only middlemen, not those suspected of being original suppliers or end users.
The grand jury indicted Arnold on three counts, including conspiracy to distribute steroids with BALCO head Victor Conte, as well as the introduction and delivery of THG, a steroid that was undetectable by sports testing.
"Today, we have taken another important step in the ongoing effort to eliminate the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs in sports," US Attorney Kevin Ryan said.
Through his lawyers, Arnold, whose name was mentioned in earlier BALCO court papers but who was not previously charged, denied the allegations.
"Patrick Arnold is a respected chemist and researcher in the field of nutritional supplements," lawyer Nanci Clarence said in a statement.
"He is not guilty and will defend these charges vigorously in a court of law, not in the press. He looks forward to his day in court."
The indictment quoted an August 2005 Internet posting by Arnold on the website bodybuilding.com as expressing little concern about the BALCO investigation.
"Really, as much as the feds may want to make an example of me, with the way the law is written there is not much that can be done," he wrote.
"Certainly they may make a media and political controversy out of it. But I don't care."
The discovery of THG in 2003, a specially designed anabolic steroid tweaked by chemists to make it undetectable under normal testing, shocked the world of sport and prompted an effort to clamp down on performance-enhancing drugs.
The latest indictment charges Arnold with devising THG as well as norbolethone and desoxymethyltestosterone, known as DMT or 'Madol'.
Investigators searched his home and the business he helps operate, Proviant Technologies, in September.
The indictment says Arnold likely made THG from gestrinone, a steroid it alleges he spent thousands of dollars buying from China over two years.
It says he then supplied the final product to Conte at BALCO.
Last month, Conte was sentenced to four months in prison and four months' home confinement.
Greg Anderson, who was Bonds' trainer, was sentenced to three months in prison and three months home confinement.
Conte, who has not begun his prison sentence, did not return an e-mail request for comment.
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