Russia Seeks Release of Official Held in U.S.

Russia swiftly protested Thursday the arrest in New York of a high-ranking official sought by Swiss authorities for alleged money laundering.

Russian authorities demanded the release of Pavel P. Borodin, even as Swiss authorities declared that they would seek his extradition.

Borodin, former head of the Kremlin’s property department and now secretary of the Russia-Belarus Union, appeared in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday and was ordered held without bail for a week.

With Moscow wary about the incoming Bush administration’s approach toward Russia, the arrest prompted a diplomatic furor. Parliamentary deputies and Borodin’s lawyers criticized his arrest as a slap against Russia.

Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov called in the U.S. ambassador to Russia, James Collins, to protest the arrest and request Borodin’s unconditional release. Ivanov told journalists that Russia was taking unspecified steps in America and Switzerland to win his freedom.

Borodin, 54, was arrested as he arrived in the U.S. on what Russian media said was an invitation to attend a dinner and other inaugural events from a company that had backed the Bush campaign. Although he has diplomatic status, Borodin was carrying a civilian passport when he was detained.

Belarus President Alexander G. Lukashenko read journalists an excerpt from the invitation, which included a promise that Borodin would be met at the airport.

“Well, they met him at the airport, and they handcuffed him,” Lukashenko said. He called the arrest “an extremely unfriendly attack against Belarus and Russia.”

Swiss prosecutors issued a warrant for Borodin’s arrest last January over a money-laundering case involving alleged bribes to top Russian officials by Mabetex, a Swiss construction firm that won contracts to renovate Kremlin properties.

The Russian prosecutor’s office opened a case against Borodin in March 1999 but closed its investigation in December. He was not charged in Russia, and Borodin has denied any wrongdoing.

Borodin was in high spirits after receiving the invitation Tuesday, according to his deputy, Anatoly Bondarev. Borodin managed to get some souvenirs to present to his American hosts but was not able to get a visa in his diplomatic passport before he flew out the following day.

Bondarev said Russian Foreign Ministry officials assured Borodin that he would retain diplomatic immunity while traveling on a civilian passport with a valid visa.

“He was not nervous that something might go wrong or that he could be detained. He was only nervous that he would not have enough time to press his suit and get a tuxedo to wear,” Bondarev said. “No one even suspected that there could be problems with the Swiss and U.S. authorities.”

As head of the vast property department under then-President Boris N. Yeltsin, Borodin was one of the most powerful officials in the Kremlin. In 1996, Borodin brought Vladimir V. Putin from St. Petersburg, where the latter had been deputy in the city administration, to work in Moscow as his deputy, launching Putin’s rapid rise in the Kremlin.

Last January, Putin, who was then acting president, gave him a figurehead role--as chief of the Russia-Belarus Union, which is supposed to oversee reunification of the two former Soviet republics.

Borodin’s lawyer, Boris Kuznetsov, insisted that his client had diplomatic status.

“I think politically, it is a spit at Russia. It is a very unpleasant incident,” said Genrikh Padva, another Borodin lawyer. “It is a scandalous case in my opinion.”

Ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, deputy speaker of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, called for the arrest of U.S. citizens in Russia in reprisal.

Yuri I. Skuratov, the Russian prosecutor who opened the case against Borodin only to be sacked by Yeltsin, said Borodin took a big risk flying to the U.S. knowing of the Swiss arrest warrant.

“Borodin must have approached the legal system in the West with the same distorted standards that he uses for the Russian judicial system. He thought he was safe. He was scared of nothing. But he was wrong,” Skuratov said.