MOSCOW, Nov 17: A Russian deputy finance minister responsible for international financial relations was arrested for attempting to defraud the state budget, news agencies reported on Saturday.

Sergei Storchak was detained along with two Moscow businessmen on Thursday for “attempting to embezzle large sums of money from the state budget”, a General Prosecutor’s Office official said Saturday, the ITAR-TASS and Interfax news agencies reported.

Their arrest was approved by a court on Friday, said the official, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the General Prosecutor’s newly formed Investigative Committee.

“The investigation of the case is continuing,” ITAR-TASS quoted him as saying. No one from the committee was immediately available to comment.

The Finance Ministry on Friday announced that Storchak had been arrested outside the ministry’s building, with his office later searched by FSB security agents, ITAR-TASS reported.

Storchak has been deputy finance chief since November 2005 after heading the ministry’s department of international financial relations, public debt and public financial assets.

He was in charge of negotiations to restructure Russia’s Soviet-era debt to the Paris Club group of debtor nations.—AFP