A RESPECTED former member of the Duma has alleged that associates of Mikhail Kasyanov, the Prime Minister, offered him $500,000 (?345,000) to halt a study of Russian government borrowing in the run-up to the crash of the rouble two years ago.

Viktor Gitin, until recently a member of the Duma's finance committee, said that representatives of Mr Kasyanov, then Deputy Finance Minister, tried to buy his silence in early 1998 over a decision whether or not to default on billions of dollars of German loans. Mr Kasyanov chose not to default, and months later the rouble crashed, helping to trigger the financial crisis.

Mr Gitin was imprisoned in Siberia earlier this year on corruption charges linked to an allegedly fraudulent savings account. His arrest has been condemned in an open letter from 365 fellow Duma deputies. Since then, he says, he has suffered two attempts on his life and two heart attacks.

He was released last week for treatment in a hospital in Moscow, from where he said: "Kasyanov never threatened me, but people from his entourage came to offer the bribes to make me stop my work".

"I was too inquisitive. If the documents I collected had been made public Mr Kasyanov would never have become Prime Minister, but since his appointment no one has been interested in studying them."

Mr Kasyanov has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing before or during the 1998 crisis. Nevertheless, the dozens of boxes of papers Mr Gitin amassed on a range of government financial matters during his time on the Duma finance committee were confiscated at the time of his arrest. Mr Gitin said that the documents shed light on a number of controversial episodes, including the privatisation of the Arctic mining giant, Norilsk Nickel, the lucrative trading by Kremlin insiders of Soviet era rouble loans to Moscow's allies, and the 1998 crash itself.

His comments will deepen Mr Kasyanov's embarrassment over a decision by Switzerland last month to reopen an investigation into what happened to $4.8 billion in International Monetary Fund aid released to the Russian Central Bank days before the rouble collapsed.

The IMF loan was part of a $11.4 billion international package assembled to support the rouble in the summer of 1998. The Central Bank has admitted that most of the IMF tranche never reached Russia, being sold off instead to commercial Russian banks that deposited their dollars in foreign accounts.

From Giles Whittell in Moscow. Kasyanov accused of $500,000 bribe attempt. "The Times", No. 66 900, August 8 2000