Banker Andrei Borodin granted asylum in Britain after fleeing Vladimir Putin's Russia

Andrei Borodin, 45, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain had given him refuge after he submitted evidence showing how he was targeted for a politically motivated prosecution by Dmitry Medvedev, the former president who is now Russia’s prime minister. The Kremlin denounced the Home Office’s decision, accusing Britain of interfering in an “ordinary criminal” matter and declaring the asylum application a “simple ruse”. Mr Borodin fled to London in 2011 and, soon afterwards, bought Britain’s most expensive home, the £140 million Park Place Estate near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. He was previously chief executive and co-owner of the Bank of Moscow. Mr Borodin is wanted in Russia for alleged fraud and was made the subject of an Interpol “red notice” last summer. He was close to Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow who was ousted three years ago, and to the politician’s wife, Yelena Baturina, a billionaire property magnate. Mr Borodin is accused of enabling a loan of £270million from his bank – then partly controlled by the Moscow city government – to a company that used the money to buy land from Ms Baturina at an inflated price.