Switzerland Issues Arrest Warrant for Ex-Kremlin Official Borodin

Swiss authorities investigating a Russian money-laundering affair have issued an international arrest warrant for former top Kremlin official Pavel P. Borodin, a Swiss magistrate said Thursday.

The arrest warrant for Borodin, a key aide to former Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and still a government official, already has been sent to Interpol, said the magistrate, who declined to be identified.

The bold and diplomatically unusual move by the Swiss is the first of its kind against a serving Russian official and an unprecedented accusation aimed at someone who was at the heart of the Kremlin.

Acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin ousted Borodin from the Kremlin administration in a reshuffle earlier this month. Putin demoted Borodin to a figurehead position in the Russian government as secretary of the Russia-Belarus Union that Moscow established with its sister former Soviet republic.

The charges are part of an investigation by Geneva’s judicial authorities into alleged kickbacks paid to Russian officials by the Swiss-based construction firm Mabetex.

The Kremlin and Mabetex have denied any wrongdoing in the affair, in which a number of Swiss bank accounts have been frozen.

In Moscow, Borodin’s spokeswoman said the former Kremlin property manager had received no word from Switzerland about the arrest warrant and knew about it only from media reports.

Borodin later was quoted by Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency as saying: “It’s a provocation connected with the formation of the union between Russia and Belarus.”