The head of a Moscow Bank has been arrested along with two of his bodyguards on suspicion of raping an 18-year-old employee and kidnapping her colleague, police officials said Tuesday.


Andrei Pashkevich of RUOP, the police organized crime department, said that Leonid Rozenblyum, chairman of the board of directors of Investprombank, was arrested Oct. 6 after one of his staff economists told RUOP that Rozenblyum had raped her the previous night.


According to Pashkevich, the economist and a 20-year-old male computer programmer took an unspecified amount of money from the company prior to the reported rape. Pashkevich said he could not specify whether the money had been stolen or taken due to some misunderstanding.


The two employees later returned the sum. But according to the economist's account to the police, Rozenblyum, 31, and the bodyguards raped her for what he called "moral damages" and demanded $5,000 for her colleague's release.


RUOP officials found the programmer locked in one of the company's offices and promptly arrested his captors, Pashkevich said.


He said the three men are currently under investigation by a local prosecutor's office and would be held in isolation for up to 30 days.


While neither of the two alleged victims was available for comment Tuesday, Rozenblyum's wife, Olga Dubovitskaya, maintained her husband's innocence.


"There's one thing I can say, and that is that everything that happened according to conventional wisdom is 100 percent lies," Dubovitskaya said. "The most important thing for me is the faith I have in my husband, and I don't need anything else."


Dubovitskaya, who also works for Investprombank, said she believed the accusations were part of a conspiracy against her husband.


She said had been with her husband since 8 p.m. the night of the alleged crime and believed that her husband was set up by a debtor with a grudge.


Dubovitskaya said her husband had already received numerous telephone calls threatening her and her children.