A RUSSIAN official, who became famous in the West when President Yeltsin introduced his democratic and economic reforms, is awaiting extradition in a Warsaw prison to face trial in Moscow on charges of corruption.
The media portrayed the arrest as Sergei Stankevich last week as the first coup in a campaign ordered by Mr Yeltsin to clean up Russia's notoriously dirty public life. But some analysts and politicians said they feared Mr Stankevich, accused of accepting a $10,000 bribe, was being made a scapegoat for far worse criminals in high places who continue to line their pockets.
Out of all proportion to his significance, the ginger haired Mr Stankevich became a star in the west in the early 1990s. Because he spoke good English, with other English speakers among Russian politicians, western television companies relied on him to comment on the free market reforms which Mr Yeltsin was bringing in. He actually held the relatively lowly post of deputy mayor of Moscow.
It was in this job that, according to the accusation, he yielded to temptation. Music lovers still remember an open air opera festival on Red Square in July 1992. The Spanish tenor, Jose Carreras, was among the singers who took part. But the Russian prosecutor general has filed charges that Mr Stankevich only facilitated this after accepting $10,000 from the Georgian businessman who organised the event.
"Stankevich is no angel," said Andrei Piontkovsky, the director of Moscow's Centre for Strategic Studies. "But the sum is question is laughable when set against the background of the grand scale corruption that is going on with official knowledge and approval."
Konstantin Borovoi, founder of the Moscow stock exchange and now an independent deputy, wrote to the Polish President, Alexander Kwasniewski, asking him to give Mr Stanekivch political asylum. "Like in Soviet times, a political campaign has been announced, in this case the campaign against corruption," he said. "So that it does not affect prominent political figures sullied by corruption, scapegoats are being brought out into public view, the uncovering of whom is designed to calm the public, angry at the uncontrolled venality and greed of today's politicians.
A picture is worth a thousand words they say. The Moscow Times put it succinctly with a cartoon showing a policeman pouring over a tiny black footprint with a magnifying glass, while ignoring the huge footprints of some other gigantic creature which had just passed by.
Who are the big fish still being allowed to swim freely while the little ones get hooked?
It is dangerous for journalists to name names. But earlier this year, the independent television channel NTV came out with a damning report about officials who were in Mr Yeltsin's immediate circle until just before last summer's presidential election. It accused them of laundering millions of dollars of drug money in Belgium by producing vodka there. They made a fortune by importing it back into Russia, taking advantage of a special duty free status which the Kremlin had given them.
The report was overshadowed by a wave of outrage in the Russian media about NATO's west-ward expansion and the scandal has been more or less forgotten.
Separately, questions have been asked about the income of the prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin. Izvestia reprinted an article from Le Monde suggesting he had become one of the richest men in the world by acquiring a bloc of Russian gas shares. A spokesman said Mr Chernomyrdin lived on a monthly salary worth the equivalent of $700 and kept only a few personal belongings in the home provided for him by the state.
Sarcastically, an editorial writer of the Moscow Times urged poor Mr Chernomyrdin to give himself a salary increase and congratulated the deputy prime minister, Anatoly Chubais, for at least paying a plausible amount of tax on his much larger declared income.
While scandal has lapped at the walls of the Kremlin, there has never been any suggestion that Mr Yeltsin himself is corrupt. But then, as a modern tsar in an ancient palace, he has hardly needed to be.
He has, however, read the mood of the people, millions of whom have not received their wages and pensions for months. He has promoted the 37 year old politician Boris Nemtsov, whose slogan is:
"I will not take bribes, I will not steal."
And last week, in a speech about the need for a new generation in politics, Mr Yeltsin gave a clear signal to Mr Chernomyrdin (59) that come the next presidential elections in the year 2000 he is likely to pass him over and encourage the younger man.