MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) - Police have prevented the assassination of a Moscow bank’s president, the Interior Ministry’s department in the Russian capital reported Wednesday.

In early August, operatives were informed that a man was seeking people who would agree to abduct and kill the head of a Moscow bank. Two law enforcement officers posed as such people.

“In the evening of August 20, Moscow Criminal Investigation department officers staged the abduction and brought people who looked like and were made up as the bank’s president and his bodyguard to the suspect’s garage,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The suspect was then detained by police,” it said, adding that the mastermind had planned to take 800 million rubles ($24.3 million) from the victim and pay half of the sum to perpetrators.

The ministry did not name the bank or its president, but Internet tabloid Life News provided some details, identifying the suspected mastermind as Muscovite Ilya Kalashnikov, the bank as Fundservicebank and its head as Alexander Volovnik.

An investigation is underway.