Russian political groups held their founding congresses at the weekend in preparation for December's Duma elections amid a welter of allegations that associates of President Yeltsin and his family were involved in what may have been the world's largest money-laundering operation.
Reports in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera and in USA Today have pointed the finger at President Yeltsin and his associates in connection with the flight of billions of dollars from Russia.
The American newspaper named a number of people as being investigated by US and UK law enforcement agencies in connection with the laundering of $15 billion through the Bank of New York and the Republic National Bank. Among those named were Mr Yeltsin's daughter, Ms Tatyana Dyachenko, along with close Yeltsin associates, Mr Anatoly Chubais and Mr Alexander Livshits, both former finance ministers, and the former deputy premiers Mr Vladimir Potanin and Mr Oleg Soskovets.
The US news agency UPI has carried a similar report citing "US intelligence sources" as confirming its veracity
Corriere della Sera's report that a raid on the offices of Mabetex, a Swiss company contracted to renovate Kremlin offices, discovered credit card slips in the names of Mr Yeltsin and other members of his family has been confirmed by the office of the prosecutor of the canton of Ticino.
The slips referred to cards held by "B.N. Eltsin", "T.B. Djac enko" and "E.B. Okulova". Ms Yelena Okulova and Ms Dyach enko are Mr Yeltsin's daughters. The differences in spelling are accounted for by different methods of transliterating letters from Russia's Cyrillic alphabet to its Latin equivalent. Mabetex was under investigation by the Swiss authorities in connection with allegations that a leading Kremlin official, Mr Pavel Borodin, received bribes from the company in return for a Kremlin contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Both Mr Borodin and Mabetex have denied the allegations and the Kremlin has issued a statement saying that Mr Yeltsin and his wife and children have "never opened accounts at foreign banks". The incomes of Mr Yeltsin and his family had been declared openly according to Russian law, the statement added.
In an interview on the Moscow radio station, Ekho Moskvy, Mr Livshits denied involvement in money laundering and described the USA Today report as "an outrageous lie". Speaking to the Reuters news agency Mr Chubais, whose probity has been questioned in reports by the Central Intelligence Agency to the office of US vice-President, Mr Al Gore, said allegations about foreign accounts held by him or his relatives were false.
"I have never had any such accounts and do not have," he said.
In a separate move in Switzerland the authorities froze bank accounts totalling $65 million in moves understood to be connected with a Swiss-based company called Andava which handled finances from Russia's international airline Aeroflot. Mr Yeltsin's elder daughter, Yelena, is married to Aeroflot's managing director while Mr Boris Berez ovsky, an associate of Mr Yeltsin's younger daughter, Tatyana, is a major shareholder in Aeroflot.
Mr Berezovsky, regarded as a modern-day Rasputin for his involvement in political intrigue, claimed that the allegations were a "provocation" organised by Moscow's mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, who has, with the former prime minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, set up a new political movement. This "Fatherland-All Russia" group seems likely to score a major victory over both the proYeltsin and Communist blocs especially as the conservative Agrarian Party has defected from its former alliance with the communists.
