Russia investigates Boris Yeltsin museum for 'foreign agent' activity - RIA

(Reuters) -Russia's justice ministry has started investigating a museum dedicated to the late president Boris Yeltsin for possible activity as a "foreign agent", state-owned agency RIA reported on Thursday.

The Yeltsin Centre in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg pays tribute to the life, work and legacy of Yeltsin, who served as post-Soviet Russia's first president from 1991 to 1999 and designated Vladimir Putin as his chosen successor.

The museum's steering committee includes Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and senior Kremlin officials Anton Vaino and Alexei Gromov, according to the institution's website.

The term "foreign agent" has connotations of spying and has been widely used by Russian authorities against journalists, opposition figures and others whom it deems to be conducting anti-state activity with backing from abroad.

Such a designation - if confirmed by the investigation - would be a stain on the legacy of Yeltsin, who died in 2007 at the age of 76.

Many Russians credit him with defeating a hardline Soviet coup in 1991, but he is also widely blamed for the turbulent period after the Soviet collapse in which many people were plunged into hardship while a small group of "oligarchs" acquired vast fortunes.

RIA said Deputy Justice Minister Oleg Sviridenko had told a commission of the lower house of parliament that a "deep" check of the Yeltsin Centre had begun and nothing would be hidden.

It said Sviridenko was replying to a request by a lawmaker, Andrei Alshevskikh, for a probe that would establish "once and for all" whether there was any truth behind speculation about "foreign agent" activity by the Yeltsin Centre.

The museum said in a statement that all its activity, including financial, was transparent and legal.

"We are confident that an audit by the Ministry of Justice will confirm that there are not, and cannot be, any grounds for declaring the Yeltsin Centre a foreign agent," it said.

(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Felix Light, Editing by Gareth Jones and Angus MacSwan)