Igor Reshetin was charged with "arranging the illegal transfer to China of Russian space technology that can be used to carry weapons of mass destruction," the lawyer, Viktor Kononenko, told AFP.

Reshetin, head of exports at Russia's Central Research Institute for Machine Building, was arrested on Tuesday and ordered detained for two months, the lawyer said.

The institute signed a contract with a Chinese company in 1996 under an inter-governmental agreement between Moscow and Beijing on Russian assistance for development of the Chinese space sector, Kononenko said.

Based in the outskirts of Moscow, the institute is one of the main research centres in the Russian space sector.

Reshetin and two assistants, Sergei Tverdokhlebov and Alexander Rozhkin, are also accused of "wasting" one million dollars (825,300 euros) paid by China for another contract, the lawyer said.

"Russian space agency experts who examined the dossier have concluded that the technology passed to China could not be used for military ends," the lawyer said.

In November 2004, Valentin Danilov, the former head of a university space research laboratory in Siberia, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for giving China top secrets about Russia's space technology.

Danilov has repeatedly pleaded his innocence and said information that he sold to a Chinese organization was already in the public domain.

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