There are many misdemeanors a Russian oligarch can commit with impunity, from fraud to murder, and many of them have done so. There's only one really unforgivable crime in the unwritten code of Russian laws known as 'ponatiye', or understandings, and that is defiance of the Kremlin's will.

Mikhail Gutseriyev, former chief executive of Russian oil group Russneft, committed exactly that crime last month. He chose to protest what he described as "unprecedented hounding" by the Russian government to pressure him to sell his company to Oleg Deripaska, a businessman perceived to be friendly with the Kremlin. Russneft accounts for about three per cent of Russia's crude output; Deripaska's Basic Element was reported to have offered around $ 6.5 billion for the company.

Gutseriyev's protest seems to have been a miscalculation on his part. On Tuesday a Moscow court issued a warrant  for Gutseriyev's arrest on charges of tax evasion and fraud. Russia's former richest man Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now in jail in Siberia, faced similar charges back in 2004. Even if both men are guilty of the crimes of which they have been convicted (or, in Gutseriyev's case, charged with), one thing is painfully clear--they are not being punished for the crimes on the charge sheet but for a breach of the 'ponatiye.' Gutseriyev, it seems, had been expected to pocket his money and yield his company on the quiet. Instead he made a public fuss, pointing a finger of blame directly at the Kremlin. Just as Putin could not allow Khodorkovsky's defiant funding of opposition political parties to go unpunished, so Gutseriyev cannot be allowed to get away with openly scolding his betters--even if the current charges fizzle into a mere warning shot by the authorities.

Gutseriyev's fate has a terrible, Sophoclean twist to it; on Monday Russneft announced that his only son, 21-year old Chingiskhan, a graduate of London's Harrow school, was killed in a Moscow car accident over the weekend. From billionaire to grieving father to prisoner in a few days. As in an ancient tragedy, the man who raised his hand against Russia's venal new Gods has been punished swiftly and with terrible fury.