Dr Ekkart Arbeit, the recently appointed head of Australian athletics, revealed `intimate details' about his East German athletes to the Stasi, the East German secret police, according to Stasi archives. The 56-year-old Arbeit, who was appointed head of Australia's track and field coaches earlier this year under a storm of protest because of his past involvement with East German athletics, was revealed to have been a Stasi informer, codename `Claus Tisch', from 1971 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Johannes Legner, a spokesman for the body responsible for the Stasi archives, said that Arbeit, who has been shunned by Australia's leading athletes such as world 400 metres champion Cathy Freeman, was a `classic collaborator'.

According to the files, Arbeit wrote over 100 reports, for the Stasi, on his athletes including some highly intimate details about their private lives.

`Claus Tisch' reported on athletes, some of them high profile, who were homosexual or others who had affairs with other members of the team.

Arbeit also tightly controlled the money spent by athletes when they went on trips abroad, ensuring that all the valuable foreign currency they were given for these excursions was spent.

Legner added that it was also clear from the files that Arbeit, East Germany's throwing coach from 1982-88 and head track and field coach from 1988-89, knew that illegal doping of athletes was going on.

"However, at the same time there is no evidence that he personally administered any of the drugs to the athletes," Legner added.

Arbeit has always denied that he had direct involvement in the doping of athletes in East Germany during his time as a coach there in the 1980s.

He told an Australian television programme in October that the controversy had killed his career. "At this moment for my profession I am a dead person . . . with all these articles in the newspapers I am dead," he said.

"You think that (East Germany) was the centre for all drugs? It's not at all. It was a part of the training all over the world. It was a fact of life," he added.

Although the Australian Athletics bosses said they were convinced of his innocence regarding the use of drugs, they set up a three-man commission to investigate the allegations.