A top prosecutor has accused senior government figures of stealing millions of dollars, in a rare display of division within Russia's ruling elite.

The head of the Prosecutor-General's Investigative Committee said yesterday that $18 million (£13 million) had been embezzled from state coffers by a current and former deputy finance minister.

Aleksandr Bastrykin said: “It would not be an exaggeration to say that some of the best specialists in finance and economics — including a former and a current deputy finance minister — have been involved in organising large-scale theft of state funds in recent years.”

He did not name anyone, but officials said later that Mr Bastrykin was accusing Sergei Storchak and the former deputy minister Vadim Volkov.

Mr Storchak is a close ally of Aleksei Kudrin, the Finance Minister, who is seen as the champion of liberal economic policies that are opposed by hardliners inside the Kremlin.

Mr Storchak was arrested and accused of plotting to steal $43 million in state funds in 2007. At the time, he was in charge of managing Russia's Stabilisation Fund, containing $148 billion.

He was freed on bail last October after Mr Kudrin offered guarantees that his deputy would not leave the country. The arrest was perceived as an attempt by a rival Kremlin faction to put pressure on Mr Kudrin over the allocation of Russia's vast reserves, built up when oil prices were high.

The latest twist comes just before Mr Kudrin travels to Rome for a meeting of the Group of Eight finance ministers today. Mr Storchak is on leave, but still formally a deputy minister.

Last week the Government halted a policy of refinancing foreign debt for private companies after spending only $10 billion of a promised $50 billion. The move angered businesses with Kremlin links that were hoping for a bailout, but Mr Kudrin had pushed for debts to be refinanced through the banking system.

The Finance Ministry is cutting this year's state budget to reflect lower oil prices. One senior member of parliament said that this would include a 15 per cent reduction in defence spending, which Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, had pledged to protect.

The Transparency International watchdog rates Russia as one of the world's most-corrupt countries, ranking it 147th last year in an annual league table of 180 nations.

A senior member of Mr Bastrykin's committee described official corruption as “pervasive” last year and claimed that businesses spent $36 billion a year in bribes to bureaucrats. Mr Bastrykin offered a much smaller figure yesterday, saying that corruption by police and officials had cost the state about $26 million last year.

Mr Bastrykin is a former university classmate of Mr Putin's, who appointed him to head the investigations committee when he was President.

Analysts said that the case reflected a broader struggle in the Kremlin between liberals around Mr Kudrin and the siloviki, or security service faction, who are pushing for more state direction of the economy.

Stanislav Belkovsky, a leading political analyst, said: “Now Kudrin's opponents think there is another good opportunity to force him to resign because of conflicting views over Russia's economic policy in an environment of acute shortage of money.”

Times Recommends

• No apology for Germany’s own Nazi victims
• Intricate web of fear and hope tying down deal
• Victims remembered a year after Mumbai attacks