Swiss deny revealing secrets in Russia probe

(Reuters) -- The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office on Monday denied allegations it damaged the interests of Geneva-based financial services company Forus Services SA in a probe into money missing from Russian state airline Aeroflot.

(Reuters) — The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office on Monday denied allegations it damaged the interests of Geneva-based financial services company Forus Services SA in a probe into money missing from Russian state airline Aeroflot.

“The allegations are completely wrong. We deny that we showed or sent documents relating to Forus to Russia,” Dominique Reymond, spokesman for office in Berne, told Reuters.

Forus said on Friday it filed charges against Switzerland’s former top prosecutor, alleging documents her office seized had ended up in Aeroflot’s hands.

Forus says the Swiss authorities are investigating the company as part of a probe into the alleged misappropriation of $400 million in currency revenues belonging to Aeroflot.

Forus, which has denied any wrongdoing, said authorities had also wrongfully blocked some of its bank accounts.

The company has been seeking to unwind the freeze which, Reymond said, had been instigated under a formal request for legal assistance by Russian investigators.

Rene Kuppers, Forus’ managing director, told Reuters that last week the company filed two charges against former Federal Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who is now chief prosecutor at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Del Ponte left her job in Berne earlier this month.

Her office in The Hague referred all queries about her former job back to the Swiss prosecutor’s office.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Ministry in Berne, under whose authority the public prosecutor’s office falls, said it was aware of the charges and was considering its next moves.

Kuppers said Del Ponte had violated professional secrecy rules by communicating confidential information to the Russian authorities. He said the prosecutor’s office had known confiscated Forus documents would end up with Aeroflot.

In Moscow both Aeroflot and the chief prosecutor’s office declined immediate comment.

Kuppers said he had written to Valery Okulov, Aeroflot chief executive, for a reaction but in the face of silence, Forus was now seeking an extraordinary audit of Aeroflot’s books.

The audit was to prove that no money had been taken. “If (the allegations) are true, we would have taken $200 million and another (company) $200 million. In that case, Aeroflot would have been ruined by now,” Kuppers said.

Aeroflot, which has $500 million to $600 million in foreign currency revenues a year, formally has to agree to the audit by London-based auditors from Price Waterhouse Coopers, he said.