A top Russian investigator on Thursday said current and former deputy finance ministers were guilty of "large-scale theft," in the latest blow to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin's staff.
The allegation comes as prosecutors are already pursuing charges against one deputy finance minister, Sergei Storchak, who was arrested last year on embezzlement charges and is awaiting trial.
His fall from grace has been seen as an attack by hard-liners in Russia's elite on the credibility of Kudrin, regarded as a relative liberal in Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's government.
"In recent years, without exaggeration, the best financial and economic specialists, including current and former Russian deputy finance ministers, have been involved in organizing the systemic embezzlement of state funds on an especially large scale," the head of the investigative committee of the prosecutor's office, Alexander Bastrykin, said on the committee's web site.
While the Storchak case is already well advanced, Thursday's statement suggested the net was being cast wider.
It came as Russia is reeling under the weight of the global economic crisis, following a plunge in oil prices and raw materials, its key export earners.
Storchak has denied all charges against him. Bastrykin said his committee had "already received all expert appraisals... The investigation will be finished shortly," in an apparent reference to Storchak's case
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