Russian investigators and crack police forces raided the main Moscow office of Deutsche Bank yesterday as part of a fraud investigation linked to the construction of a top hotel.

Investigators said their probe concerned alleged embezzlement conducted during the renovation of the Moscow Hotel – a vast Stalin-era building located opposite the Kremlin near Red Square.

“Today investigators of the Russian Investigative Committee – backed by operational forces of the Interior Ministry – are conducting a search on the premises of Deutsche Bank,” investigators said in a statement.

The investigation focused on $87.5 million allegedly embezzled by an aide to a lawmaker in Russia’s State Duma Lower House of Parliament.

The aide “has fled representatives of the investigation (and been) declared wanted,” the Investigative Committee statement said.

It was not immediately clear from the investigators’ statement what role Deutsche Bank played in the probe. The Frankfurt-based bank refused to comment when contacted by AFP.

The investigator’s statement said the money was embezzled from a Moscow city government-owned company that oversees the reconstruction project.

Russian news reports said the Duma aide – identified as Vitaly Gorokhin – had been involved in litigation with the Moscow-owned firm for several months.

Press reports further suggested that the investigation was linked to a larger ownership dispute over the centrally-located hotel.

The aging hotel was demolished in 2004 and a modern replica began to be constructed in its place. But the project has been accompanied by bitter ownership battles from the start.

The Vedomosti daily said Mr Gorokhin worked as an aide to a wealthy Duma deputy who saw his holding in the hotel shrink in favour of his business rivals.

Those rivals include Suleyman Kerimov – a senator in the Upper House of Parliament and the powerful Russian businessman Arkady Rotenberg.

The probe came only months after the Kremlin sacked Moscow mayor Yury Luzkov – one of the country’s most powerful regional leaders who had a say in the division of most of the city’s top real estate projects.

Russian prosecutors have since launched a probe into a bank launched by the city under Mr Luzhkov and announced the start of other investigations.

The head of Russia’s Audit Chamber separately told Interfax that his office had found that Moscow authorities had committed “many serious financial violations” in 2009 and 2010.

“In these two years alone, we have uncovered violations worth 230 billion rubles ($7.8 billion),” Sergei Stepashin said.

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