Inaugural Invite Snags Russian
Police in New York have detained former top Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin under a warrant issued by Swiss authorities for alleged money laundering.
Russia is demanding Borodin's immediate and unconditional release.
CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports the arrest came Wednesday, at JKF Airport in New York, on what was a rare trip out of Russia for Borodin, who's been ducking the Swiss arrest warrant for about a year.
The Russian news agency Interfax says Borodin was in the U.S. to attend the inauguration of President-elect George W. Bush.
He wasn't, however, traveling on a diplomatic passport.
A Borodin attorney says he nevertheless has diplomatic status and should not have been detained.
Within hours of Borodin's arrest, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had summoned U.S. ambassador James Collins and protested the arrest.
Interfax quoted Borodin's lawyers Genrikh Padva and Boris Kuznetsov as saying they would soon talk to their colleagues in New York to clarify why he had been detained.
Borodin, the former head of the Kremlin's huge property empire, was at the center of a series of allegations of bribe-taking involving Swiss firms which dogged the final years in office of former President Boris Yeltsin.
Borodin strenuously denied any wrongdoing and Russian prosecutors dropped their investigations last year.
Borodin, moved from his Kremlin post after Vladimir Putin came to office last year, is currently head of a special body overseeing efforts to form a "union state" between Russia and the neighbouring former Soviet republic of Belarus.
He is close to Putin, who said in a book of reflections published last year that Borodin had been responsible for bringing him to Moscow from St Petersburg in 1996 to work in the presidential administration.
Bernard Bertossa, Geneva's chief prosecutor whose international warrant led to Borodin's arrest, said the Russian was wanted in Switzerland for involvement in laundering $25 million.
"He was arrested on our international arrest warrant," said Bertossa. "We will be asking the United States to extradite Borodin to Switzerland."
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, seen on television greeting Borodin during a visit to Moscow this week, criticized the arrest.
"This is a very unfriendly move by the United States in relation to Belarus and Russia," said Lukashenko.
Russian parliamentarians also denounced the arrest. Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky even suggested retaliating by arresting U.S. citizens currently in Russia.
A Swiss investigating magistrate indicted five people and issued the warrant for alleged money laundering against Borodin a year ago after a probe into alleged bribe-taking by government officials from Swiss construction firms Mabetex and Mercata.
Bertossa declined to say what implications Borodin's arrest would have on the Swiss probe.
The Russian prosecutors dropped their case against orodin last year after years of cooperation with the Swiss authorities.
The probe into the firms centered on the alleged payment of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Kremlin officials to secure lucrative contracts to refurbish Russian public buildings.
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