The man who was widely thought to be the true owner of the Bermuda-based IPOC Fund has been fired as Russian Telecommunications Minister.

Leonid Reiman was named by a Swiss arbitration panel in 2006 as the true owner of the Fund, though he has always denied this.

The same tribunal, which was one part of the protracted legal action that surrounded IPOC for four years, expressed its opinion that the Fund was a vehicle for the proceeds of crime and that Mr. Reiman had profited from his position.

The allegations have been seen as evidence of high-level corrpution in the Kremlin and may have been a factor in Mr. Reiman's dismissal by his old friend, Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Putin, whose tenure as Russia's President ended earlier this month, has taken over as the country's Prime Minister and when he named his Cabinet this week, Mr. Reiman was dropped.

The IPOC Fund is in the process of being wound up, a process that was not contested by the company's attorneys in the Bermuda Supreme Court last week.