SPOKANE -- The FBI agents investigating the figure skating scandal at the Salt Lake City Olympics will be in Spokane this week to interview French skating officials at the Skate America competition, a newspaper reported Monday.

Skate America, the first leg of the International Skating Union's figure skating Grand Prix, runs Thursday through Sunday in the Spokane Arena.

The competition is expected to attract 60 world-class figure skaters, including 25 Olympians, from more than a dozen nations.

The Spokesman-Review reported the competition will also attract FBI agents trying to determine if bribery was involved in the pairs judging at the Winter Olympics. The newspaper did not reveal its source.

Joe Valiquette, an FBI spokesman in New York, refused to say whether FBI agents from New York or Spokane will conduct interviews during Skate America.

"We don't talk about what we're going to do,'' Valiquette told the newspaper. "Talking about it may have some very negative impact on what we're going to do.''

The pairs gold medal in Salt Lake City went to Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. But after the judging scandal surfaced, a second gold medal was awarded to Canadian pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.

The Russian gold medalists pulled out of the Spokane event last week. The Canadian pair is touring with Stars on Ice, which is scheduled to perform in Spokane on Jan. 3.

This week's competition in Spokane apparently will be the first opportunity the FBI will have to corner a French figure skating official at the center of the scandal.

Didier Gailhaguet, president of the French Figure Skating Federation, told The Associated Press this month he may come to Spokane to watch the competition.

Gailhaguet and French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne were banned from international figure skating competitions because of their roles in the pairs judging scandal.

They cannot be in areas reserved for accredited officials, including judges, but they can attend as spectators, according to Rowland Jack, a spokesman for the International Skating Union. The ban extends through the 2006 Winter Olympics.

A reputed Russian mobster linked to the scandal is in custody in Italy, awaiting extradition to the United States. A federal complaint filed in New York alleges Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov used his influence with Russian and French figure skating officials to fix the gold medal outcomes of the pairs and ice dancing competitions in Salt Lake City.

No one else has been charged.

Past controversies notwithstanding, Spokane civic leaders are expecting the nationally televised skating competition, the first in the United States since the Olympics, to bathe the city in a favorable light.

"It's fair to say Spokane will be the center of the figure skating universe from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27,'' said Bob Dunlap, spokesman for the U.S. Figure Skating Association.