MANAMA, Bahrain, Sept. 29 -- Just months before Bahrain is to hold parliamentary and municipal elections, a former government adviser has set off a political firestorm with a report describing what he says is a vast conspiracy to rig the elections, manipulate the country's sectarian balance and ensure Sunni domination over the country's majority Shiites.

The scandal, which is being called "Bandargate" after the author of the report, Salah al-Bandar, reaches to the core of this tiny island kingdom's simmering tensions.

The report includes hundreds of pages of supporting material, apparently authentic, including canceled checks, hotel bills, accounting sheets and notes. The material suggests that at the very least, unusual business dealings were occurring between government officials, Mr. Bandar says, and that it may have amounted to an effort to set off ethnic conflict.

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In all, Mr. Bandar contends, the documents indicate that $6 million was spent to plant articles in Bahraini newspapers, organize counterdemonstrations when Shiites held protests, set off cellphone text-message campaigns against opposition figures and even support a program to convert Shiites into Sunnis. Government officials have dismissed Mr. Bandar as a disgruntled employee with ulterior motives, insisting that the report is a fabrication.