(Adds comments from bank experts in paragraphs 9-18)

MOSCOW, January 19 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian banker, accused of ordering the killing of a senior Central Bank license regulator, said he was being punished for refusing to participate in the money laundering operations of Russia's main bank, a leading business daily said Friday.

Alexei Frenkel, who has been charged with organizing the murder of Central Bank Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov September 13, said in a letter he wrote a month before his arrest January 11 that he planned to expose a scheme which helped the Central Bank launder money through banks whose licenses it was going to revoke, Kommersant said.

Frenkel, former chairman of the board in the VIP-bank, said his bank's license had been canceled three months before Kozlov's murder because it had refused to cash money for Central Bank officials. The letter, however, did not cite the names of those allegedly involved in the scheme, the paper said.

The banker also said the Central Bank had denied

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