A 74-year-old port magnate known in the underworld as Antikvar is arrested by an FSB team, hauled into Moscow’s Basmanny Court, and suddenly the ghosts of St Petersburg’s wild 1990s feel very alive. Ilya Traber's career took him from from antiques monopolies to oil terminals, in the murky interface between “authoritative business” and outright organised crime. And much of it thanks to his relationship with Putin in and since the 1990s.

Traber's name has run through the bloody annals of 'Banditsky Peterbug,' so why act now? My theory: he overstepped the bounds of the new rules, at a time when serious figures within the FSB, including First Deputy Director Korolev, had reason to go after him.

But this would have come to nothing had Traber's old partner Putin not given the green light. When the decision is made at the top, even yesterday’s “untouchables” can become expendable.

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