A dispute between the St Petersburg Open Christianity Society (OCS) branch and city authorities has shocked the international community.
Inga Ivanova, an interim president of OCS St Petersburg, claimed she and two other women staff members were assaulted by a group of four people including a customs officer and a tax police officer at the society's offices.
"Two vans full of soldiers nearby seemed to have been waiting for the assailants," she told a press conference at the Russian-American Press and Information Center. The case is under police investigation.
OCS sympathizers from Western Europe, Canada and the United States left the press conference grimacing in pain as society members told them how city authorities had harassed and even assaulted them.
Chairman of the International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education, Doctor John Stelt, promised last week to publicize the crisis in over 50 countries.
He said he and others must warn the international community against any investment or charity activities in St Petersburg saying, "The city's laws are still unreliable."
Other foreign delegates have written reports on "corruption in the city's jury and bureaucracy," to their consulates.
A building at Chernoretsky Pereulok 4/6 is at the center of the long-running dispute between the Christian group and city.
The building houses a school, an institute of for about 300 students, an orthodox church and an orphans charity fund.
Ms Ivanova explained that their cashier had been dragged to the city's tax inspectorate offices from her home by armed police and forced to surrender to tax inspectors 3.5 million roubles ($780) allocated to pay for telephone bills.
The office's telephones were disconnected the next day and the Christian group is suing the tax inspectors over the confiscation.
An ownership contract between the city property committee (KUGI) and the Christian group was signed in June 1991, stating that the building was given to the society indefinitely.
OCS' wrangle with the city began early last year. In March, 1994, the city issued an initial three-month order to vacate the building.
The city said the OCS was occupying the building illegally.
After a court battle this August the contract between the two parties was declared null and void, but the Christians refused to obey eviction orders, claiming those orders had no legal grounds.
OCS claims to have spent about $1 million on renovation since the building was handed over to them.
"Now they tell us to go; it's typical blackmail," said Sergei Yegorov, the society's lawyer, adding that the city administration should give OCS another building.
The St Petersburg Mayor's Office Department of Religious Affairs has dismissed all the Christians' claims as "distortions of facts."
Religious Affairs department head Elga Paretskina said that, among other things, the society was in court to answer charges on tax evasion and violation of sanitary norms.
OCS have complained that only five of 50 international society members, were allowed to attend a meeting with St Petersburg Deputy Mayor for Cultural Affairs Vladimir Petrovich Yakovlev, despite prior arrangements and permission for the meeting.
The meeting was supposed to find a solution to the conflict, but the society's lawyer was denied permission to attend.
Ms Paretskina, who was present at the meeting, said the Mayor's Office had the right to limit the number of people visiting their Smolny offices. She added that the lawyer was not denied permission.