Former aide claims drunken Yeltsin killed motorcyclist

Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first democratically elected leader, has been accused of killing a man in a drunken hit-and-run accident when in power and of ordering his aides to cover it up.

The incident, alleged to have taken place in the early 1990s, is detailed in an updated biography of Yeltsin penned by his former top aide and senior bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov.

Korzhakov's book, Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn to Dusk, was first published in 1997 but a new chapter containing the new allegations has been recently added.

Now a deputy in the Russian Parliament, Korzhakov enjoyed unrivalled access to Yeltsin during his 1991-1999 presidency, acting as his closest adviser for much of it. However the two men fell out in 1996 when Korzhakov was fired from his post as head of the presidential security service.

Since then he has had no qualms in revealing the colourful details of Yeltsin's self-confessed alcohol problem but these latest claims appear to be more serious.

They also appear to incriminate Korzhakov himself, since he claims that he covered the scandal up.

He said the accident took place after the men had been drinking at a bath house in rural Russia in an area where Yeltsin had a dacha, or country house.

"Boris Nikolayevich [Yeltsin] ... simply wanted to go for a drive, to practise driving a car," he wrote. "[But] as bad luck would have it there was a Zhiguli [type of car] and a motorcycle on the country road about 500m from the village in those early hours of the morning." The driver of the car was talking through an open door to the motorcyclist.

Korzhakov claimed that his drunken boss mixed up the accelerator and the brake in his alcohol-fuelled stupor, and hit both, and that the motorcyclist later died from his wounds.

"We bought [him] medicine and changed doctors and hospitals [to cover the tracks] but after six months he died. We buried him as well since he did not have any close relatives.

"Yeltsin never asked about the killed man. Maybe he had no time - he was dying to become the guarantor of the constitution. This was his first victim for the sake of democracy."

Korzhakov, 54, said the owner of the car never reported the accident to the police, had his damaged vehicle expertly repaired and that, thanks to him, nobody ever found out what happened.

Asked by the Moscow Times when and where the incident took place, he would only say "in a certain small village" in the early 1990s but other remarks suggest it was 1991.

Yeltsin, 73 and retired, has not responded to the allegations but has denied other claims made by Korzhakov in the past, dismissing them as the rantings of an embittered former confidant.

Korzhakov, a former KGB employee, worked for Yeltsin for 11 years. He claims he often used to water down his boss' vodka.

Yeltsin, who in 1994 drunkenly conducted an orchestra at a ceremony to mark the departure of Russian troops from former East Germany, has admitted he used alcohol as a stress-reliever.

However a series of heart attacks forced him to limit himself to one glass of wine a day.

His profile in Russia today is extremely low.

- INDEPENDENT