The arrest in Moscow of Alexander Karabanov, a lawyer whose client list once read like a rogue’s gallery of Russian wealth and power, has sent a jolt through the capital’s legal fraternity. Detained on 6 May and remanded in custody, Karabanov is accused of defrauding a businessman of two million roubles — part of a promised seven-million-rouble payment to secure impunity in a criminal investigation linked to the Kalashnikov concern, the state-owned weapons manufacturer. Viewed from Moscow, the case is less about a single venal lawyer than about the Kremlin’s steady tightening of the screws on an elite it once indulged.

Karabanov built his reputation defending figures such as former colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, a police officer convicted of taking bribes worth nine billion roubles, and the perfume-tycoon-turned-senator Umar Dzhabrailov, who fired a pistol in a luxury hotel. His fall is all the starker because it implicates Alexei Ledenev, a winner of the television show “Dancing with the Stars” and the founder of a machinery firm, who now faces charges of attempted bribery. Analysts in London note that the case dovetails with a broader anti-corruption drive that has reached into the upper echelons of the defence ministry.

Only days earlier, a Moscow court ordered the seizure of assets worth over seven billion roubles belonging to Ruslan Tsalikov, a former first deputy defence minister, in a civil suit filed by the prosecutor-general’s office. The property — land and buildings in the Moscow region and North Ossetia — was allegedly held through front men. Parallels are being drawn in Washington with Iran’s simultaneous campaign of asset confiscation.

The Iranian judiciary recently announced the seizure of property belonging to forty unnamed individuals deemed to have “acted against state security”, including a flat valued at 35 billion tomans in Hamedan. The assets, officials said, will fund reconstruction. Both crackdowns, observers argue, serve a dual purpose: they project an image of cleansing among the privileged, while replenishing state coffers and intimidating potential defectors.

For Moscow’s lawyers and businessmen, the message is clear — no reputation, however glittering, now offers immunity from the system’s grasp. As Karabanov’s defence prepares to challenge his detention, the broader question is whether these cases mark the beginning of a sustained purge or a calibrated demonstration of power ahead of political uncertainty. What is certain is that the legal landscape in Russia is becoming as treacherous as the cases its lawyers once profited from.