The Justice Department will file its formal complaint in 60 days.
Armstrong, the onetime
legendary and now disgraced cyclist, has admitted to using
performance-enhancing drugs. He was the team's lead rider when the U.S.
Postal Service sponsored the team from 1996 to 2004 and Armstrong won
six of his seven Tour de France titles, the Justice Department said.
The civil lawsuit alleges
that Armstrong and former team managers submitted false claims for
government funds to the sponsoring Postal Service by their "regularly
employing banned substances and method to enhance their performance" in
violation of the sponsorship agreement, the federal announcement said.
"Today's action
demonstrates the Department of Justice's steadfast commitment to
safeguarding federal funds and making sure that contractors live up to
their promises," Stuart F. Delery, principal deputy assistant attorney
general for the civil division, said in a statement.
Between 2001 and 2004,
the Postal Service paid $31 million in sponsorship fees, but that
affiliation has now been "unfairly associated with what has been
described as 'the most sophisticated, professionalized, and successful
doping program that sport has ever seen,' " said Ronald C. Machen Jr.,
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
"In today's economic
climate, the U.S. Postal Service is simply not in a position to allow
Lance Armstrong or any of the other defendants to walk away with the
tens of millions of dollars they illegitimately procured," Machen said.
The suit also names as
defendants Johan Bruyneel, who had managed the U.S. Postal Service and
Discovery racing teams on which Armstrong raced, and Tailwind Sports,
which was the team's management entity, the Justice Department said.
The Justice Department is
joining the lawsuit's allegations against Bruyneel and Tailwind, but it
isn't intervening in the suit's claims against several other
defendants, the agency said.
The U.S. Postal Service supported the intervention.
"The defendants agreed
to play by the rules and not use performance enhancing drugs," general
counsel and executive vice president Mary Anne Gibbons said in a
statement. "We now know that the defendants failed to live up to their
agreement, and instead knowingly engaged in a pattern of activity that
violated the rules of professional cycling and, therefore, violated the
terms of their contracts with the Postal Service."
The lawsuit accuses the
former management of Armstrong's team of defrauding the federal
government of millions of dollars because it knew about the drug use and
didn't do anything.
The federal government had been evaluating for weeks whether to intervene in the lawsuit.
An attorney for
Armstrong, Robert Luskin, said that ongoing discussions between the
federal government and Armstrong's legal team had collapsed.
"Lance and his
representatives worked constructively over these last weeks with federal
lawyers to resolve this case fairly, but those talks failed because we
disagree about whether the Postal Service was damaged," Luskin said.
"The Postal Service's own studies show that the service benefited
tremendously from its sponsorship -- benefits totaling more than $100
million."
Former teammate Floyd
Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after failing a
drug test, filed the lawsuit in 2010 against the team, which was
sponsored the U.S. Postal Service.
As of midday Friday, the whistle-blower suit remained under court seal.
For years, Armstrong had
denied drug use and blood doping, but he publicly admitted such use in
January, three months after international cycling's governing body
stripped him of his seven Tour de France titles.
That stripping came
after a damning report by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accused Armstrong
and his team of the "most sophisticated, professionalized and successful
doping program" in cycling history.
CULLED FROM www.cnn.com
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