The business chief of Russian state news agency Itar-Tass was found knifed to death at his flat in central Moscow yesterday, but prosecutors said the killing could be linked to a personal dispute.

Anatoly Voronin, 55, Tass's business manager, died "from stab and slash wounds", a spokesman for the Moscow prosecutor's office said.

"The investigation is looking at various motives but for the time being investigators do not have grounds to say the killing was connected to the dead man's work," said Svetlana Petrenko, for Moscow city prosecutor's office.

Deputy Moscow prosecutor Alexei Grigoryev went to the scene of the murder at Mr Voronin's flat in central Moscow.

"Most likely, Mr Grigoryev believes, the killing was linked to a personal dispute and therefore investigators are studying a group of the deceased's acquaintances. This version is being looked at very closely," Ms Petrenko said.

Tass sources said that Mr Voronin was supposed to return to work yesterday from holiday and his driver waited three hours for him outside his block of flats in Moscow this morning before returning to Tass to report him missing.

With Tass officials, the driver went up to his flat and found the door open with all of his things scattered all over the flat and saw Mr Voronin's body, the sources said.

"It is a colossal loss for Tass," said Ludmila Perkina, an editorial official at Tass's main news centre in Moscow.

"He did so much for Tass. He tried to do everything so that we - the journalists - could work. Our hearts are very heavy today."

Mr Voronin had worked at Tass for 23 years. A murder case has been opened by Moscow prosecutors into Mr Voronin's death.

The murder of Anna Politkovskaya ten days ago underlined the risks some reporters in Russia face when delving into viperous underworld where crime and politics overlap.

Several other recent murders, including the killing of a deputy chairman of the Central Bank and a senior engineer at one of Russia's top oil firms, have raised fears of a return to the bandit capitalism that gripped Russia during the 1990s.