Leonard Bershidsky writes:  Evtushenkov, founder of Sistema and Bashnaft, an oil company   rode into big business on the coattails of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a cheerful but ruthless politician whose wife became the city’s biggest real estate developer during his tenure. Evtushenkov headed the city government’s committee for science and technology, moved quickly to privatize Moscow’s fixed telephone network and set up what is now one of Russia’s three national mobile carriers, MTS. His business empire, called Sistema, grew rapidly. Evtushenkov expanded into electronics manufacturing and real estate, then took his companies public. Back then, Russia was a relatively tame dictatorship, so investors weren’t worried about Evtushenkov’s path to riches.

Sistema and MTS shares have crashed since news of Evtushenkov’s confinement to his mansion near Moscow with a monitor bracelet. The Kremlin doesn’t care. “We allow that some insignificant show of emotion in the markets may take place,” Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, told the Interfax news agency. “That, however, is no reason for law enforcement agencies not carrying out necessary investigations.”

Sechin and Rosneft, sanctioned in the U.S. and in Europe, no longer have to wear sheep’s clothing and pretend to play by civilized rules. Private Russian businesses, large and small, now face a bigger threat than before the new Cold War: Putin and his entourage, riding a patriotic wave, no longer need a smokescreen for the de-facto nationalization of Russia’s economy so it can be run by their rent-seeking clique.