Prosecution Under Suspicion in Inquiry of Russian Ex-Premier

A top prosecutor denied Friday there was any political motivation to an investigation of former Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov over ownership of a luxury villa that was once government property.

The investigation of Kasyanov, a potential candidate in presidential elections scheduled for 2008, has been widely seen as an effort to ensure that he does not enter the race. The inquiry was announced earlier this week.

“There is no politics here,” Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov said Friday at a news conference. “We regard all this as a scheme to acquire property.”

Kolesnikov displayed documents that he said provided evidence that Kasyanov illegally acquired ownership of the valuable riverside property near Moscow while he was prime minister.

“This property-grabbing scheme got underway on Jan. 22, 2003, with an ordinance signed by Kasyanov,” Kolesnikov said. “This is a signature he put in with his own hand. This is the statement of [property] acceptance and hand-over.”

Kolesnikov said the property had been purchased from the state for $400,000, which he said was only “a symbolic amount.” Reports in Russian media have estimated the value of the property in tens of millions of dollars.

The investigation follows allegations by a pro-Kremlin lawmaker, Alexander Khinshtein, that Kasyanov had acquired the property through a front company.

Kasyanov, 47, who is on vacation outside the country, has denied wrongdoing. His carefully worded statement focused on the charges made by Khinshtein, of the United Russia party.

“Throughout the years spent in the civil service I never founded any commercial organizations and never owned shares or stakes in any firms,” the statement reads. “As for my commercial activities after I left the civil service, they have been carried out and are carried out in strict compliance with the existing legislation.”

Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Center for Strategic Studies, a Moscow think tank, described the investigation as “a purely political case.”

“Kasyanov is rapidly becoming a center that attracts the part of the Russian establishment that has grown disappointed and disillusioned with the Putin regime,” Piontkovsky said. “Kasyanov is very charismatic. He has a clean Russian look about him. He has good political potential in Russia.”

Liliya Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, called the investigation a warning to Kasyanov aimed at forcing him to remain abroad, and also a broader warning to “all representatives of the old and new political elites.”

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin dismissed Kasyanov from the prime minister’s post a few weeks before presidential elections in March 2004, in which he won a second term with 71% of the vote.

Kasyanov, who like Putin served in the government of President Boris N. Yeltsin, is seen as having relatively close ties to big business and tycoons known here as oligarchs. He refrained from making public comments about politics for a year after his dismissal. But he then began speaking out in ways that appeared aimed at positioning himself as a standard-bearer for supporters of greater democracy and free markets.

“There are a lot of people among the liberals with a so-called clean bill of political health, but the problem is that liberal and democratic parties and movements find it almost impossible to come to terms among themselves,” Shevtsova said.

“Kasyanov, unassociated with any of them and with his experience and potential, seems to be the most likely candidate who could consolidate all these forces,” she said. “Now the moment of truth has arrived for him, whether he returns and picks up the gauntlet or stays abroad and leaves the Russian political stage.”

Shevtsova said that even if Kasyanov’s actions could be shown to have been improper, legal moves against him would still amount to selective prosecution for political ends.

“Even if Kasyanov privatized his dacha in not quite a legal way

Because Kasyanov was a longtime government insider, it could be dangerous for Putin to have him put on trial, she said, as that “could result in a lot of unpredictable and unpleasant revelations.”