VLADIMIR PUTIN

, who came to Moscow as Borodin’s deputy in 1996, moved his former boss out of the property office but named him state secretary of the Russia-Belarus Union, a position which arguably gives him a certain immunity from prosecution. Borodin deserves a “presumption of innocence,” Putin said last March.

Two other Swiss investigations bedevil senior Russian leaders. A Geneva prosecutor is on the money trail of privatized airline Aeroflot, whose hard-currency receipts for some period of time washed mysteriously through the accounts of two Swiss companies owned by Russian oligarch