Russia has asked Britain to extradite the Bank of Moscow’s former president, who sought refuge in London almost a year ago over alleged wrongdoings in a fraudulent loan, officials said yesterday.

Andrei Borodin fled to Britain in April 2011, where he remains free despite Russia placing him under an international arrest warrant in November.

“Russian prosecutors have prepared and sent to British authorities a request for extradition to charge him,” Russian prosecutors’ spokeswoman Marina Gridneva told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russian authorities are investigating Borodin as part of a probe into a loan he granted in 2009 to Elena Baturina, the wife of Moscow’s billionaire former mayor Yury Luzhkov.

His deputy Dmitri Akoulin is also being investigated. President Dmitry Medvedev humiliatingly sacked the long-reigning mayor in September 2010 after a televised campaign highlighting alleged corruption and favours to Baturina, herself a construction magnate.

The loan was for 13 billion rubles (€338 million).

Borodin sold his 20 per cent share in the bank shortly after fleeing Russia. The bank has been taken over by a state-owned financial institution.

In Britain, the Home Office said it does not comment on individual extradition requests until a person has been arrested.

“It is the UK’s longstanding policy that we do not comment on whether an extradition request has been made or received until a person is arrested in relation to that request,” a spokeswoman said.