Why Has Russia Arrested Semyon Mogilevich?

Semyon Mogilevich has been the former Soviet Union's most notorious gangster for a decade and a half. He's on the FBI most-wanted list for his activities in the United States. He's persona non grata in the U.K. But he's traveled without interference in Ukraine and Russia -- until yesterday, when he was arrested in Moscow.

The Russians announced today that a 50-man police squad detained the 61-year-old Mogilevich along with a cosmetics company owner named Vladimir Nekrasov on tax evasion charges. Mogilevich was using the pseudonym Sergei Shnaider.

Mogilevich is deserving of a Hollywood script. In a hilarious 1999 interview with BBC's Panorama, here's how he responded when asked why he registered one of his companies in the Channel Islands: "The problem was that I didn't know any other islands. When they taught us geography at school, I was sick that day."

Come on Semyon. We've seen gangster movies, too.

The question remains: Why now? Who did Mogilevich cross to end up detained? Is this a warning? Is Vladimir Putin trying to recover some of his image after his catastrophic handling of the Alexander Litvinenko affair?