Siberian region leader Lebed charged with abuse of office

MOSCOW, July 25 (RIA Novosti) - A regional leader in Siberia has become the latest senior official to be subject to a criminal investigation after prosecutors announced Thursday that he had been charged with abuse of office.

Alexei Lebed, the president of the Republic of Khakassia, has been accused of misappropriating public funds while vacationing abroad.

"Lebed, as the top executive official of Khakassia, has spent two overseas vacations paid for by two higher education institutions," the Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement on its Web site.

The 51-year-old regional leader is the younger brother of the late General Alexander Lebed, who shot to fame as a presidential hopeful in 1996 and later became governor of the massive Krasnoyarsk Region, where he died in a helicopter crash in 2002.

The prosecutors said criminal cases had been also filed into embezzlement and abuse of office against several top officials in the republic, including the former deputy prime minister.

The case against the Khakassia leader and other local government officials is the latest in a series of corruption probes against officials in Russian provinces. The new investigation follows the arrest of the mayor of Volgograd in southern Russia in June and the governor and deputy governor of the northern Nenets Autonomous Area on embezzlement charges in May.

Russia's new prosecutor general set up a new department tasked with fighting corruption in the country on June 29.