In a rapidly-developing political and financial scandal, the former head of Russia's Presidential Guards, Gen Alexander Korzhakov, has claimed he was asked by a leading businessman to kill the mayor of Moscow.
Law-enforcement agencies in the United States and Switzerland are investigating alleged money-laundering running to $15 billion through the Bank of New York and alleged bribery of high officials by a construction company based in Lugano. Italy's Corriere della Sera, which broke the story on Swiss links to the Kremlin, yesterday ran an interview with Mr Korzhakov saying that Mr Boris Berezovsky, an associate of President Yeltsin's younger daughter, had asked him to assassinate the mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, who is a political rival to "the family", as those associated with Mr Yeltsin are termed.
Mr Korzhakov, a former KGB officer, said he had information that deposits of Mr Yeltsin and his close aides had been placed in a number of current accounts. He would, he said, be prepared to give a statement to this effect to an investigating magistrate. The official reaction to the scandal has been that it is a plot against the President and against Russia. This was reiterated at a function in Moscow yesterday by the Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov.
Mr Korzhakov said there were no such plots and then launched into a scathing attack on Mr Yeltsin: "What plot? Did you see him when he was awarding medals to the soldiers who had come back from Dagestan? Either he had drunk half a litre beforehand or he had been on the booze the night before. What plot could there possibly be against a President who goes on show in that sort of condition?" he told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, a plot by Islamic extremists has been put forward as a theory for the explosion which injured more than 40 people in an underground shopping mall near the Kremlin on Tuesday night. Twenty-four people are still in hospital following the blast. Reports that four people had been killed proved untrue but the blast has shocked most Muscovites, who fear it is connected with the conflict in Dagestan.
A pamphlet left at the scene of the explosion seems to indicate that a previously-unknown anti-consumerist group called the Union of Revolutionary Writers was behind the terrorist act. The bizarrely-worded pamphlet stated that urban guerrilla warfare would create a revolutionary situation in Russia.
It expressed "complete solidarity with those comrades who, like a squadron of Icaruses, are extinguishing the false sun of the consumerist lifestyle". It went on: "A hamburger that a dead man has not finished is a revolutionary hamburger. Consumers! We do not like your way of life. It is not safe for you."
The bomb, believed to have contained eight ounces of TNT, injured 41 people, many of them superficially due to flying glass. It is understood, however, that one person detained in hospital has suffered 50 per cent burns.
Russia used funds from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) properly, the country's central bank head, Mr Viktor Gerashchenko, said yesterday, dismissing suggestions they had been siphoned off as part of a money-laundering scheme.
Speaking during a conference in Zurich, he also said the Russian finance ministry might have to borrow funds from the Russian central bank if an IMF tranche of funds is delayed.
