MOSCOW — Hours after the economist Sergei M. Guriev said that he had fled Russia because he feared he would be prosecuted in a politically tinged case, Russia’s largest bank announced that its shareholders had overwhelmingly re-elected him to its board of directors, a show of support that points to rifts within Russia’s ruling class.

Mr. Guriev had taken steps to withdraw his candidacy for the board of Sberbank earlier this week, but bank officials said it was too late to remove his name from the ballot, which made Friday’s announcement all the more dramatic. He received more votes than any other candidate — indeed more than the bank’s chairman.

Though the votes for Mr. Guriev were cast days ago, before the news broke that he had fled, the results leave little doubt that he has the sympathy of a range of powerful figures in the world of finance and government. The bank’s chairman, German Gref, said Mr. Guriev could remain on the board and take part in board meetings by teleconference.

Mr. Guriev’s ideas had helped guide economic policy during the presidency of Dmitri A. Medvedev. After Vladimir V. Putin returned to the post, Mr. Guriev became one of the most prominent people to vocally support opposition causes. Since then, prosecutors have questioned him repeatedly in a conflict-of-interest case centering on a 2011 report he helped write that criticized the prosecution of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a Putin rival and oil tycoon.