The public prosecutor in the northern Italian town of Busto Arsizio has opened a doping investigation into Italian cycling star Ivan Basso, the ANSA news agency reported on Thursday.

And the public prosecutor in the German town of Göttingen wants to hear from Basso regarding an inquiry involving a doctor suspected of supplying drugs to Eufemiano Fuentes, the physician at the center of the Operación Puerto blood-doping scandal that rocked last year’s Tour de France.

The new investigations come after Basso admitted on Monday before the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) that he was involved in the Puerto affair.

The Italian seemed to backtrack during a press conference he called on Tuesday, denying ever having taken banned drugs or using blood transfusions. He did, however, admit to having made an attempt to do so in preparation for the 2006 Tour.

The 29-year-old Basso, one of the favorites for this year's Tour, was among dozens of riders implicated in the Puerto affair, which erupted before last year's Tour when Spanish police uncovered an alleged blood-doping network said to have been run by Fuentes.

Police discovered bags of blood and doping products on a raid on Fuentes's laboratory in Madrid, along with codenames of cyclists and documents that suggested the doctor had been paid to manipulate and store blood.

The 2006 Tour was subsequently deprived of some top names, among them Basso and Germany's Jan Ullrich, who were barred from competing after their implication in the Puerto affair.

This year, Tour organizers have been pressuring cycling authorities to act against implicated riders to try to avoid a repeat of last year's fiasco.

Meanwhile, some 30-odd Spanish cyclists implicated in the Puerto scandal are trying to cut a deal with the Spanish cycling federation (RFEC) for reduced sanctions, the daily newspaper El Pais reported on Thursday.

The newspaper reported that the cyclists and RFEC representatives met Wednesday, but reached no agreement.