A company that administers mutual funds is suing Harvard for fraud allegedly committed by leaders of the now-disbanded Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID).

The complaint was filed three days ago in Maine district court, just one month after a $120 million U.S. government lawsuit against the University was filed.

The Forum Financial Group, based in Portland, Maine, claims that Professor of Economics Andrei N. Shleifer '82, the principal investigator of HIID, and Jonathan R. Hay, HIID general director, used their leadership roles to reap personal gain from HIID's Russian capital markets program.

In the suit, the company contends that Hay and Shleifer used federal funds allocated through HIID to bribe Russian government officials with "cash, no-show jobs, exorbitant and unjustified compensation and benefits, and exorbitant and unjustified housing allowances." The Russian officials, the suit contends, deposited these payments in foreign bank accounts to evade taxation.

After paying off the Russian officials, the complaint says, Hay was able to secure the rights to Russia's first mutual fund for Forum with Shleifer's assistance. Forum says Hay forced the company to sell its interest in the fund, enabling him to purchase it himself through a third party.

The company claims in the brief that it lost "the profits and value of The First Russian Specialized Depository [a company created in the dealings] and the financial benefit [Forum] would have received from an increase in their international business" as a result of Shleifer and Hay's alleged wrongdoing.

Hay's lawyer contested these claims.

"Mr. Hay acted completely appropriately in connection with Forum Financial," said David M. Zornow of the New York law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. "Everything he did was known to and approved by Russian government officials whom he was advising. It was those officials who decided what action should be taken with Forum Financial. The lawsuit is frivolous."