MOSCOW. Nov 28 (Interfax) - Interior Ministry officials have detained Telman Alasgarov, deputy head of the All-Russian Public Fund for Assistance to Interior Ministry Veterans, and former Federal Security Service officer Andrei Ponkin on suspicion of fraud, the Interior Ministry told Interfax.
"Telman Alasgarov and Andrei Ponkin are suspected of extortion in the amount of $1.5 million," the agency said.
The sources have told Interfax that Ponkin was an aide to businessman Boris Berezovsky, who now lives in London.
The detention was made by officials from the Main Department for Economic Safety and Corruption Prevention of the Interior Ministry and the Department for the Prevention of Economic Crimes and Corruption Prevention for the Central Administrative District of the Interior Ministry's Main Department.
According to the Interior Ministry's Department for Economic Safety and Corruption Prevention, the said persons offered a former board chairman of one of Stavropol's banks assistance with the closure of a criminal case involving the stealing of securities from the bank's charter capital and promised to ensure him a positive decision by Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) inspectors.
"The suspects said the money would go to officials from the DIA, the Finance Ministry, and officials from the Interior Ministry's Main Department for the Stavropol Territory," the agency said.
This information was not confirmed during the investigation, the source said.
The detention was made in a Moscow restaurant while the suspects were receiving 1.5 million rubles as the first portion of the money.
"Officials from the Main Investigations Department of the Main Department of the Interior Ministry have opened a criminal case on the basis of evidence of the crime enshrined by Criminal Code Article 30, Part 3 and Article 159, Part 4 (fraud)," the Interior Ministry said.
Operatives continue investigating the suspects' illegal activities and corruption relations.
In October 2003, the British newspaper The Sunday Times published an article stating the Scotland Yard had disclosed a plan of an assassination attack against Russian President Vladimir Putin, which involved oligarch Boris Berezovsky and former Federal Security Service officials Andrei Ponkin and Alexander Litvinenko.
According to The Sunday Times, Litvinenko complained to Scotland Yard that Ponkin and his friend Alexei Alyokhin, who owned a shop, had offered him to take part in a plot against the Russian president. The two men were questioned, but were later released and returned to Moscow. The paper also reported that Litvinenko had told Berezovsky about that and Berezovsky advised him to report the information to the police.
"The information stated in The Sunday Times report is very close to reality," Berezovsky said in an interview with Kommersant.
Scotland Yard press officer Paul Clark then confirmed to Kommersant that two Russian men, ages 36 and 40, were arrested on October 12 on suspicion of violating the law on terrorism and were released on October 17 without being charged with any crime. The men returned to Russia on their own accord, he said.
Federal Security service officials have not commented on the situation.
Ponkin, in turn, told Gazeta that he "visited London to resolve financial problems with Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Litvinenko, not to discuss a plan of attack against Vladimir Putin."
According to information possessed by Kommersant, Litvinenko and Ponkin earlier served in the Federal Security Service's department on the prevention of criminal association activities. In 1998, Litvinenko, Ponkin, German Shcheglov, and Senior Lieutenant Konstantin Latyshonok publicly said their superiors had commissioned them to kill Boris Berezovsky, who was then deputy head of the Russian Security Council. They also said they were ordered to take the brother of the general director of the joint stock company Intourist Radamer - Hotel and Business Center and break the head of Federal Security Service Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin, who had won a lawsuit against Nikolai Kovalyov, who was then director of the Russian Federal Security Service. The officers were fired from the counterintelligence service after that.