Washington —- The foundation planning the Martin Luther King Jr. national memorial is facing a probe of its finances and bidding practices by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Critics of the project, including one of its former consultants, said Wednesday that federal agents have interviewed them about administrative spending, the apparent lack of an open competition for picking the sculptor, and whether its contract with a Chinese artist might violate buy-American rules.

Rica Orszag, spokeswoman for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, said the group's officers are "aware of the inspector general's investigation," but she declined to comment further.

The financial probe of the $100 million memorial effort comes amid a public debate over the memorial's planned 28-foot statue of the civil rights leader. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which must approve the project before construction begins on the National Mall in Washington, has objected to the most recent model as being too rigid, too confrontational and too much like the statuary in totalitarian countries.

Among those questioned in the inspector general probe were Atlanta painter Gilbert Young and his wife, Lea Winfrey-Young, leading critics of the memorial foundation.

Winfrey-Young said the couple gave federal investigators records they had collected since they formed the group "King Is Ours" to protest the hiring of Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, whose works for the Chinese government have included a statue of the late leader Mao Zedong.

Winfrey-Young said her concerns grew about the outsourcing of the project after she was told the foundation had not put the project up for competitive bidding among American artists and had not contacted American granite companies for the stone.

Sculptor Ed Wright, the creator of several Martin Luther King memorials across the country and a former consultant to the national project foundation, said he had provided information to a federal agent about the foundation's administrative costs and about whether a statue made of Chinese granite might exceed an importation value limit for such a project.

Wright, who designed an earlier model for the King statue, said there had been no formal bidding process for the selection of the sculptor.

He said he was perhaps the only insider who could speak out because others involved had signed confidentiality agreements. He has become one of the project's most outspoken opponents.

Officials from the inspector general's office did not return a call regarding the investigation.