BERN -- The lawyer for Swiss Ambassador to Luxembourg Peter Friederich, jailed on suspicion of money laundering, said his client was framed because of his efforts to clean up Luxembourg's image as a financial safe haven.

"It would appear essential to investigate the infiltration on Luxembourg territory by an agent working for a foreign secret service," Jean-Rene Mermoud told Sunday's ***Sonntagszeitung ***weekly.

Friederich, who was arrested on July 8 and has been suspended from his post, has rejected the accusations of money laundering.

But the Swiss prosecutor's office says he admitted to presenting a bank in Luxembourg with falsified documents regarding the source of 750,000 dollars in cash payments to his account last year.

Mermoud said he had asked Luxembourg's Justice Minister Luc Frieden to "shed light" on those claims.

He said the affair needed to be seen in the context of the scandal surrounding Clearstream International, a Luxembourg-based firm under investigation over allegations of money laundering.

Earlier this year the France newspaper ***Le Figaro ***and a popular book alleged the firm opened secret "non-declared accounts" to hide transactions of dubious origin and facilitate money laundering.

***Sonntagszeitung ***cited an Interpol document, obtained by Mermoud and addressed to the Italian secret services, about a meeting in early January between representatives from the government, banks and Clearstream.

The meeting allegedly looked at ways to show Luxembourg was working to clean up money laundering-practices and decided to find a case they could make an example of.

Mermoud claimed that, following this meeting, Luxembour's Dexia Bank alerted authorities that they suspected Friedrerich of money laundering.

The Swiss prosecutor's office said the ambassador gave the bank documents "simulating the private sale of goods to people he knew" and falsified the signature of an alleged buyer.

Friederich served as Swiss ambassador to Vietnam and Cuba before he went to Luxembourg in 1999, AFP reported.