Tonight in Washington supporters of George W. Bush will celebrate. At one of the events, a candlelight dinner arranged by Vincent Zenga, a Florida lawyer and major contributor to Mr Bush and to the Republican Party, there will be an empty seat at the table.

Pavel Borodin, a close associate of former President Boris Yeltsin, and of President Vladimir Putin, was expected to stay the night at the Westin Fairfax hotel in Fairfax, Virginia, at Mr Zenga's expense. Instead, he will be in a Brooklyn prison, held under a Swiss extradition warrant and accused of involvement in massive corruption. Mr Borodin was arrested on arrival at New York's Kennedy Airport.

Mr Zenga, from West Palm Beach, the most bitterly contested county in the presidential election, told the New York Times that the invitation to Mr Borodin had been "sent inadvertently", an answer that will not satisfy Democrats.

The question arises as to why Mr Zenga invited Russia's most disreputable politician to celebrate Mr Bush's election. Last year Mr Zenga and his wife contributed $40,000 to the Republican National Committee and $10,000 to the Bush campaign in 1998 for governor of Texas. The latter was regarded as an exceptionally large sum for out-of-state contributors.

In the Russian State Duma yesterday, Mr Yuri Shchekochikhin spoke to The Irish Times about the Borodin case. Shchekochikhin was a famous journalist in the Soviet era noted for his exposes of corruption in the Brezhnev administration. Now he sits as a deputy from the Liberal Yabloko party and is also deputy editor of the weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Last year was a bad one for the paper. One of its reporters, Igor Domnikov, was beaten to death at the entrance to his apartment block. It is now believed that the intended target was another Novaya Gazeta journalist, Oleg Sultanov, who lived in the same building and was investigating the affairs of the giant Russian oil company, Lukoil.

As the new year approached, another Novaya Gazeta journalist was attacked outside the entrance to his apartment. In this case the reporter, Oleg Lurye, who was investigating the Borodin case, survived and has now been released from hospital. An attack was also made on the paper's offices in Ryazan.

Another Yabloko deputy, Mr Vladimir Lukin, a former ambassador to the United States, wrote to the Interior Ministry, which runs the police service, asking for an explanation of the attacks. The ministry's reply, which has been seen by The Irish Times, stated that Mr Domnikov's death was a case of mistaken identity.

The attack on Mr Lurye was a simple mugging. A woman employee in the Ryazan office slipped and fell on her face and a male employee was injured while travelling in a trolleybus in which a window suddenly disintegrated, sending shards of glass into his face.

Mr Shchekochikhin does not believe the explanations. There are too many coincidences, he says. He is sure the ministry's letter illustrates complicity by the authorities in covering up corruption.

In his heyday, Borodin ran the Kremlin's property empire, which had a portfolio worth up to $600 billion. His links with a Swiss-based construction company called Mabetex are behind the extradition warrant issued against him from Berne and lodged in a New York court.

Mabetex, run by a flamboyant Kosovo Albanian businessman, Mr Behgjet Pacolli, won major contracts for restoration in the Kremlin and elsewhere. Mr Borodin was accused of taking $25 million in kickbacks. His name was also linked to the laundering of billions of dollars through various banks.

Bags of cash were reportedly taken across the border from Switzerland to Italy for redistribution to several accounts in various countries, including Ireland. Mr Pacolli admitted supplying credit cards to President Yeltsin and his daughters, having earlier denied this. The Yeltsin family repudiates the allegations.

It was Mr Borodin who plucked President Putin from the relative obscurity of the St Petersburg city administration and brought him to the Kremlin to work as his deputy at a time when much of the wrongdoing was alleged to be taking place.

However, by the time Mr Putin became President, Mr Borodin's reputation was at rock bottom. He was removed from his post as head of the property commission and appointed by Mr Putin to the post of Secretary to the Union of Russia and Belarus. Russian prosecutors have dropped all charges against him, but Swiss prosecutors have continued their investigations.

Almost the entire panoply of the Russian state has been brought into action to prevent Mr Borodin from facing trial in Switzerland. The US ambassador has been summoned to the Kremlin, where the Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, has demanded Mr Borodin's immediate release.

A diplomatic passport in Mr Borodin's name is reportedly on its way to New York. An offer has been made to the court that Mr Borodin should stay in the house of the Russian consul during court proceedings, but this was refused by Judge Viktor V. Pohorelsky of the United States District Court. Mr Borodin must stay in prison until January 25th at the earliest.