Two prominent members of the British Council’s alumni club in Russia have been charged by the Russian security service with spying for foreign companies.

Brothers Alexander and Ilya Zaslavsky have been accused of collecting commercial secrets from a Russian oil company on behalf of foreign rivals in the energy market.

Alexander is president of the British Alumni Club in Russia, a networking group under the patronage of the British Council that brings together thousands of Russians who have studied in Britain. The British Ambassador, Sir Anthony Brenton, is the club’s honorary president.

Ilya, who graduated from Oxford University in 2004, is in charge of the club’s energy committee, made up of members involved in this field. He has also been employed by TNK-BP, the Anglo-Russian oil business, since last September in the gas regulation department.

Members of the alumni club told The Times that Alexander described himself as an “energy consultant”, while Ilya had also been involved in gas consultancy before joining TNK-BP.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said that the two men, who also have US citizenship, were arrested on March 12 while allegedly attempting to obtain classified information from a Russian “employed with a national hydrocarbon institution”.

An FSB spokesman said: “The brothers were illegally collecting classified commercial information for a number of foreign hydrocarbon companies, which wished to have advantages over their Russian rivals, including those in the [Commonwealth of Independent States] markets.”

The two were charged with industrial espionage on Wednesday. The announcement came just a day after police seized documents during raids on the Moscow headquarters of TNK-BP and BP, which holds a 50 per cent stake in TNK-BP.

The FSB said that the search produced “material evidence of industrial espionage . . . and business cards of representatives of foreign defence departments and the Central Intelligence Agency”.

The arrests are certain to reignite tensions between Britain and the Kremlin, which has repeatedly accused the British Council of being a front for espionage.

Alexander, who also graduated from Oxford University, was elected president of the alumni club in December, only a month before Russia’s Foreign Ministry began a campaign to close the British Council’s regional offices in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.

The British Council initially defied the demand, but was forced to close the offices after the FSB summoned its Russian employees for interrogation and Russia’s tax police paid late-night visits to their homes.

More than 160 members of the British Alumni Club, which has branches in Moscow and five Russian regions, sent a letter of protest to the then President Putin against the forced closure of the offices. Neither Ilya nor Alexander were among the signatories. Organisers of the protest said at the time that many members had wanted to sign the letter but had feared retribution from the authorities.

Times Recommends

• C&G axed - 1,660 jobs to be lost
• UK house prices rise 1.1% as buyers return
• Mixed reaction to US banks repaying bailouts