Ex-Russian energy minister arrested in Switzerland

He confirmed Adamov was wanted by US authorities for several accounts of fraud and money laundering.

The arrest was requested by the US Justice Department, based on a warrant issued by the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Galli said.

Galli said Adamov is accused of diverting up to £4.7million that the US Energy Department provided Russia to improve security at its nuclear facilities.

The warrant accuses Adamov of investing the money in various projects and of diverting it to US firms that he controls.

Galli gave no details about why Adamov was in Berne, but the New York Times reported that he was in Switzerland to negotiate with Swiss officials about several bank accounts belonging to his daughter which the authorities had blocked.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said its consular officials in Berne were trying to meet Adamov and to ascertain the exact charges levelled against him.

“As far as we are aware, Adamov is facing charges in connection with his commercial activities in the early 1990s prior to his appointment as Russian atomic energy minister,” Alexander Yakovenko, spokesman for the ministry, told the Interfax new agency.

Russian diplomats have been in contact with Adamov’s lawyer, who has spoken to him, Yakovenko said.

While he was nuclear energy minister, Adamov angrily shrugged off US objections to Russia’s building a nuclear reactor in Iran.

Russia signed a contract in 1995 to build the first reactor at Iran’s Bushehr power plant by 2003 for an estimated £422.5million. The US has strongly objected to the project, fearing the technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons. Moscow and Tehran maintained that the plant can be used only for civilian purposes.

Swiss authorities are asking Adamov whether he is willing to accept simplified extradition to the US. If he rejects that, Washington will have to file a formal extradition request, Galli said.

Switzerland can detain Adamov for up to 40 days, after which it must file a request to extend the detention another 20 days.

Adamov was appointed Atomic Energy Minister in 1998 by then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin, but came under increasing fire in connection with corruption allegations against him and his proposal to import nuclear waste for reprocessing.

In 2001, the anti-corruption committee of Russia’s State Duma, or lower house of parliament, accused Adamov of illegally setting up companies inside and outside Russia, including a consulting firm called Omeka registered in Monroeville, Pennsylvania.

Adamov was finally dismissed from his post in March 2001 as part of a sweeping Cabinet upheaval engineered by President Vladimir Putin one year after he took office.

After leaving the minister’s post, Adamov joined the Dollezhal Institute, which designed Russia’s 11 Chernobyl-type reactors still in operation.

Last year he insisted that the design – including faulty scientific calculations – have been fully corrected at the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia and are being corrected at others.

Foreign experts who have reviewed modernisation efforts at the Kursk plant said safety was significantly increased.

Adamov said Russia’s Chernobyl-type reactors were designed to serve 30 years, but that their service life could be extended to 45-50 years.

Adamov said Russia’s Chernobyl-type reactors – which use graphite to cool its fuel rods instead of pressurised water used at more modern reactors – were designed to serve 30 years.

One of four reactors at Chernobyl, in northern Ukraine, exploded and caught fire in April 1986. About 4,400 deaths in Ukraine alone are considered to have been caused by the accident. The plant was closed in 2000.