One of Russia's richest men, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, has been reportedly placed under house arrest on accusations of money laundering.
Yevtushenkov, who is worth $9bn (£5.5bn) according to Forbes magazine Russia, was arrested late on Tuesday.
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| Vladimir Yevtushenkov |
The arrest brought accusations from the fallen oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, released from prison by Vladimir Putin last year, that the move was linked to Kremlin interest in Yevtushenkov's oil assets. Rosneft, the state-owned oil group, dismissed Khodorkovsky's comments as "absurd", on Wednesday morning.
The billionaire is the chairman and largest shareholder of Sistema, a conglomerate whose board members include the Labour peer Lord Mandelson.
Sistema controls Russia's largest mobile phone operator, MTS, the oil company Bashneft and other lucrative assets. The accusations relate to Yevtushenkov's acquisition of Bashneft, one of the few Russian oil producers that is not under state control.
Sistema said it considers the accusations baseless. Shares in Sistema collapsed by 28% in the first half hour of trading at Moscow's MICEX stock exchange on Wednesday.
"Such a dramatic turn of events comes as a surprise," said analysts at Sberbank.
"The risk of a change in the shareholder structure of Bashneft escalates, a risk that now spreads to Sistema's other assets."
Timothy Ash, chief emerging markets analyst for Standard Bank in London, said the news could cause further difficulties for a Russian investment landscape that is already muddied by sanctions related to the Ukraine conflict.
"Clearly all this comes at a particularly inopportune time for Russian markets, given concern over developments in Ukraine, the imposition of western sanctions and also the weak underlying growth story in Russia."
Khodorkovsy, formerly the country's richest man, claimed in an interview with the business daily Vedomosti that Rosneft was behind Yevtushenkov's arrest.
The former owner of the Yukos oil business spent more than a decade in jail after being convicted on economic charges that many believe were politically motivated.
Rosneft dismissed Khodorkovsky's allegations. "I don't understand why Rosneft has something to do with that. This is absurd," the RIA news agency quoted a Rosneft spokesman as saying on Wednesday.
Yevtushenkov's arrest has taken place against the backdrop of further pressure on the Russian economy. On Tuesday, the central bank said it was starting overnight rouble-dollar swap operations in order to make more dollars available to Russian banks, pushing the rouble higher in late trading on the Moscow exchange.
Russian banks and companies have experienced a shortage of dollars in recent weeks after several waves of western sanctions against Moscow, for its involvement in the Ukraine crisis, limited their access to foreign capital.
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