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Moscow • A long-serving Russian minister has been detained over an alleged $2 million bribe, the most senior government official to face charges in more than two decades.

However, the minister's allies and independent observers say he could have been framed amid jostling for influence in Russia's upper echelons.

Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev was detained late Monday, immediately after he allegedly took the bribe in a sting set up by the FSB, the KGB's main successor agency, the Investigative Committee said in a statement on Tuesday.

The investigators said Ulyukayev accepted the money for having given the green light to state-controlled Rosneft to take part in bidding for another oil company, Bashneft. Rosneft, which is chaired by a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, went on to win the tender.

Ulyukayev, the highest-ranking Russian official to have been arrested since 1993, has been formally charged for extorting a bribe from Rosneft and threatening "to use his powers to put obstacles in the way of the company's activities." As of Tuesday afternoon, the minister was still being interrogated.

Ulyukayev, who has been in the government since 2000 and has held his current post since 2013, is a known liberal figure who has spoken out against increasing government presence in the Russian economy. He had originally opposed Rosneft's bidding for Bashneft, saying it was wrong for a state-owned company to take part in a privatization drive.

Putin had defended the deal, saying that because Rosneft has minority foreign investors, the sale wasn't simply a transfer of assets from one part of the state to another.

The lucrative Bashneft was transferred to government ownership in 2014 after its owner, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, was charged with money laundering and accused of acquiring the company illegally. The charges were soon dropped. Yevtushenkov's arrest was then widely seen as Rosneft's move to take control of Bashneft, which was posting industry-leading growth in oil production at the time.

The government put 50.1 percent of Bashneft on the market earlier this year but the tender was postponed in August over the opposition of the government's liberal ministers, including Ulyukayev, to Rosneft's potential bidding. Rosneft won the tender with a $5 billion bid when the bidding was finally held last month.

Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister turned opposition activist, said in an opinion piece on the respected RBC news website on Tuesday that Rosneft could be behind the Ulyukayev case.

"I have little doubt that the middle-of-the-night detention of Economic Minister Alexei Ulyukayev is an act of revenge for hampering Rosneft's participation in the privatization of Bashneft," he said.

Milov said Rosneft could be looking to buy more assets in similar "privatization deals."

Russian state-owned television early Tuesday ran Ulyukayev's detention as the top story headlined "Fight on corruption," featuring comment from lawmakers who lauded the investigation as a major breakthrough in the long-anticipated clampdown on official graft.

Banking and finance professionals, however, were aghast that Ulyukayev — who was never previously perceived as corrupt — has been made the face of the Kremlin's campaign to fight corruption.

Alexander Shokhin, head of a major business lobbying group, said he was convinced Ulyukayev is innocent and said he may have been framed.

Shokhin, chairman of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists, told the Business FM radio station that it was highly unlikely for someone as experienced as Ulyukayev to try to extort bribes from Rosneft, which is chaired by Putin's close ally Igor Sechin.

"You have to be mad to threaten Rosneft and extort $2 million from Igor Ivanovich Sechin, who is one of the most influential people in this country, a month after the deal got both the legal and the political approval," Shokhin said.

Ulyukayev's detention coincided with the 25th anniversary of the first session of the reformist government of Yegor Gaidar, who ushered in unprecedented economic reforms. Top Russian economists and officials including Ulyukayev and Shokhin, who hail from Gaidar's inner circle, were expected to celebrate the anniversary later on Tuesday.

Mikhail Zygar, a prominent journalist and author of a best-selling book on Putin's inner circle, says Ulyukayev's fall from grace could be Putin's tactic to balance a perceived growing influence of liberals in the government with the more conservative group of intelligence and security officers.

"There was a feeling in the wider circle lately that the liberals had got a boost and got a louder voice — here you get a message that it is too early to celebrate," Zygar told The Associated Press. "It seems to be a story entirely in the president's character. ... When he thinks one group gets too weak, he needs to weaken the other side."

Ulyukayev, 60, is expected to face a court hearing later Tuesday where he could be formally arrested.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Tuesday that the president had been informed of the FSB operation in its planning stage and he insisted that the investigation should not affect the Rosneft deal.

Rosneft spokesman Mikhail Leontyev insisted in televised comments that the Bashneft sale stands.

"There cannot be any threat of the cancellation of the deal," Leontyev said on Rossiya 24 on Tuesday. "No one including the Investigative Committee has expressed any questions about the legality of the deal."