HONG KONG — China’s former railways minister, reviled by state-run media and many Chinese bloggers after a deadly high-speed train crash in the summer of 2011 and lurid allegations of high living, has been formally charged with corruption and abuse of power, the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

Xinhua said the Beijing People’s Procuratorate had filed the charges against the railways minister, Liu Zhijun, in a city court. No officials could be reached for comment on Wednesday afternoon in telephone calls to the procuratorate, which is a combined investigation and prosecution office, and to the court.

Mr. Liu was removed from his position in February 2011, five months before the crash, after reports that he had embezzled $152 million over the years. His dismissal fanned emerging worries that the quality and safety of the country’s vast high-speed rail program had been compromised by haste and corruption during construction.

Those worries greatly increased when a high-speed train plowed into the back of another train on a viaduct during a lightning storm in Wenzhou, in east-central China, on July 23, 2011, killing 40 and injuring 191. A subsequent inquiry found that serious flaws in the design of the signaling system had contributed to a failure to warn the trailing train that another train had been delayed in front of it.