The Swiss federal court has rejected an effort to prevent the authorities helping Russia with an investigation into suspected corruption at the Russian airline, Aeroflot.

The court ruled that documents relating to bank accounts of a Lausanne-based financial group, Forus, and one of its subsidiaries, Andava, could be passed on to the Russian legal authorities.

The court did not rule on the content of Forus's appeal, but turned it down because a SFr40,000 deposit requested from the company arrived two days late. It also rejected Forus's claim that it was only late because it had been held up in the post.

The Federal Prosecutor's office said the documents were immediately passed on to Russia, but added that they represented only a fraction of the information requested by Moscow. Some other documents have already been forwarded, but another appeal holding up the transfer of a larger set of papers is still pending.

The Russian authorities suspect the billionnaire businessman, Boris Berezovsky and two former Aeroflot managers of syphoning off $600 million from the airline through Forus and Andava.

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