He is accused of selling confidential information and deliberately falsifying statistics about the state of the Russian economy. Several other top officials have also been arrested.

Yuri Yurkov was the man the Russian government turned to for many key economic statistics - Gross Domestic Product (GDP), inflation and the performance of thousands of individual companies.

Yuri Yurkov

Mr Yurkov had been under surveillance for two months. Russian television said police had found $1m in his apartment.

The BBC Moscow correspondent says it is extremely rare for the authorities to open a criminal case against such a high-ranking official.

But, he says, Mr Yurkov's arrest is evidence of the government's growing determination to crack down on tax fraud.

Low tax revenues have been singled out as one of the main causes of Russia's latest financial crisis.