The Russian Finance Ministry is meeting senior figures from the banking sector this week to discuss making reforms to the country’s central bank, The Times has learnt.

Among the proposals on the table is the setting up of a regulator along the lines of London’s Financial Services Authority (FSA).

The move comes as the central bank has become subject to intense scrutiny and found itself at the centre of allegations of corruption and even murder.

The spotlight was turned on the bank in September when Andrei Kozlov, its deputy governor, was shot dead in Moscow. In January Alexei Frenkel, the chief executive of VIP-Bank, was accused of his murder.

At first, it was claimed that Mr Frenkel had killed Mr Kozlov as revenge for stripping his bank of its licence over money-laundering charges six months earlier. However, it emerged that, shortly before his arrest, Mr Frenkel had written a series of letters, in which he had made a litany of complaints against what he saw as the arbitrary and corrupt way in which the central bank withdrew licences. The central bank, he suggested, “come to you and make a proposal; you refuse, they’ll close you down”.

At first, the central bank and the Government angrily dismissed the allegations as “the ravings of a murderer”. Sergei Ignatiev, the bank governor, said that there was no hard evidence in the allegations and that they had emanated “from those whose work in fictional banking operations is being hampered by the Bank of Russia”.

Other senior figures in the banking sector were more hesitant in their defence of the central bank. Andrei Yemelin, the vice-president of the Association of Russian Banks, told the Russian media that “imperfections in banking legislation” had “led to the appearance of evidence that has allowed someone to draw conclusions about corruption in the central bank”.

Vladislav Resnik, the chairman of the Duma’s banking committee, said that the central bank often had found “artificial grounds” for removing licences.

Alexei Kudrin, the Finance Minister, has called for an audit of the central bank’s activities by the prosecutor-general. Sergei Storchak, the Deputy Finance Minister, told The Times: “Many people make complaints about how Sergei Ignatiev does his job.”

One of the proposals for reform, put forward by Mr Resnik, is that the central bank should be stripped of its monitoring role, which should go to a new “mega-regulator” along the lines of Britain’s FSA.

Others are wary of such a proposal. Mr Storchak said: “It’s too early to change the rules now, but it may be necessary in the future. Look at the UK: it took them decades to take the supervisory functions from the Bank of England and give it to the FSA. Our banking market is only 17 years old.”

Foreign investors in the banking sector are said to be watching the developments cautiously.

Kestutis Sasnauskas, a partner at East Capital, a Swedish fund manager with a $350 million (£176 million) fund investing in banks in the former Soviet Union, said: “Some of the proposals are quite worrying. For example, the central bank itself has proposed putting one of their people within each bank operating in Russia, who monitors the bank and even suggests management strategy. That seems a bit too much.”

Gun culture

March 2007: Ivan Safronov, a journalist for Kommersant, falls to his death from his flat. Colleagues say that he was killed for investigating arms sales to Syria and Iran

September 2006: Andrei Kozlov, deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, shot dead in Moscow

September: Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist, shot and killed in Moscow

July 2004: Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Russia, is shot dead outside the office of Forbes

Nov 1998: Galina Starovoitova, a liberal politician who planned to run for president, is shot dead near St Petersburg

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