RUSSIA:Russian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into alleged fraud by Mikhail Kasyanov, the former prime minister, in what opposition politicians claim is an attempt to discredit him and block his presidential ambitions.
Mr Kasyanov was dismissed as prime minister by Vladimir Putin last year and has reinvented himself as an outspoken critic of Mr Putin's policies.
While he has yet to build a popular following or formally confirm plans to run for president in 2008, the telegenic Mr Kasyanov has been compared with Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition winner of Ukraine's presidential election last year. The Russian prosecutor-general's office said it might charge Mr Kasyanov with fraud and abuse of trust, in a probe related to the alleged improper privatisation of a state-owned dacha, or country home.
It was instigated at the request of Alexander Khinstein, an MP and investigative journalist seen as close to the security services.
Mr Kasyanov, the highest-ranking official to be investigated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, yesterday denied wrongdoing.
"In all the years I was in state service, I never set up any commercial organisations, never owned shares, or stakes in any companies.
"As for my commercial activities after I left state service, they were carried out in strict accordance with the law."
Mr Kasyanov's press secretary said he was on holiday but would return to Russia on July 25th.
Boris Nemtsov, former leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, said: "All the Kremlin bosses who masterminded this obviously politically motivated case together with the special services should clearly understand that they will become former bosses sooner or later and criminal cases will be opened against them all."
Gennady Zyuganov, Communist leader in the parliament, said that in the past decade "the prosecution and courts have often been used as an axe or a hammer to beat around the head" anyone who posed a problem to the authorities. Political analysts drew parallels with the action against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of the Yukos oil company sentenced in May to nine years for fraud and tax evasion, in what was widely viewed as a politically inspired case.