The man behind the notorious Balco drugs laboratory said last night that it was jealousy of Dwain Chambers that blew the lid on the scale of doping in athletics.

To many, Victor Conte is a discredited figure after serving a jail term for distributing steroids, but since his release he has adopted an evangelical zeal to clean up the sport and recently met Dick Pound, the outgoing president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

As drugs again made the headlines at the weekend, with a witness in a perjury trial linking Maurice Greene, the 2000 Olympic 100 metres champion who retired in February, to doping, Conte said that Chambers's rivals had been so desperate to get rid of him that they became whistleblowers.

Trevor Graham, the coach whose clients included Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin, the disgraced American sprinters, goes on trial next month for allegedly lying to federal agents investigating doping. A New York Times report claimed that Source A in the case, Angel Guillermo Heredia, has produced laboratory reports, e-mails and financial records, which appear to link a dozen Olympic medal-winners to doping. Greene is allegedly one of them, although he has denied the claims vigorously. “My name's coming up in something and it's not true,” Greene said.

It was Graham who prompted the Balco inquiry when he sent an anonymous sample of tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in 2003. Last night, Conte said that

was down to Chambers. “Maurice Greene's coach, John Smith, was in collusion with Trevor Graham to remove me and Balco athletes from the sport,” he claimed. “When Trevor sent the sample of ‘the clear' (THG) to USADA he did so based upon the advice of John Smith.

“I was working with Dwain Chambers, who was consistently beating both Maurice and Tim Montgomery, who was coached by Trevor at the time. Smith and Graham decided to turn in the THG sample and name names purely out of competitive jealousy. It certainly wasn't done as a noble deed.”

Heredia claimed Greene paid him $40,000 (about £20,150) for drugs. Greene vigorously denied any involvement and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is happy with his position as an ambassador for the governing body. “With every ambassador we do an immediate check with the doping department,” Nick Davies, an IAAF spokesman, said. “In this case they said: ‘No, we don't have anything.'”

Greene, who has never failed a drugs test, has admitted to paying for “stuff” for training partners. “I would pay for stuff and not care what it was,” he said.