The top deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank died Thursday, hours after being shot by unidentified assailants in an attack that officials suggested was prompted by his efforts to clean up the country's banking system.

Andrei Kozlov, the bank's first deputy chairman, died hours after he was hospitalized in critical condition following the shooting late Wednesday, Moscow prosecutor's office spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.

Kozlov's driver was also killed in the attack, which Russian media said was carried out by two gunmen who fled after the shooting. It occurred outside a sports arena where bank employees were having a soccer game.

While rarer than in the turbulent 1990s, contract killings of businessmen and bankers still regularly occur in Russia, where business conflicts often turn violent.

Vice Premier Alexander Zhukov said the shooting was likely linked to Kozlov's duties, and suggested the possibility of a connection with the Central Bank's revocation of licenses of unreliable commercial banks, the Interfax news agency reported.

Kozlov had been responsible for banking supervision, and had overseen an ambitious program to reduce criminality and money laundering in the banking system.

"His steps to cleanse the (banking) system and to build a normal, civilized system apparently strongly encroached upon somebody's interests," the head of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunian, told Ekho Moskvy radio.

LONDON (Reuters)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has launched a review of disaster planning for the financial markets, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

The move was prompted by concerns about Wall Street's ability to withstand a terrorist attack, natural disaster or flu pandemic, the newspaper said.

In one of his first acts in the post, the FT said Paulson had asked the president's working group on financial markets (PPT -wm) to assess the improvements made since the September 11 attacks on the United States five years ago.