Vladimir Radchenko’s first day on the job as acting chief tax inspector for Dagestan, a region in southern Russia, did not go smoothly. As he stepped into the office on February 6, he was confronted by the son of the president of the autonomous republic, escorted from the building by two men with pistols, stuffed into a car, driven around the capital city for an hour and threatened with death if he ever set foot in the region again.

And that was just the start of a very bad week. A lesser bureaucrat, faced with the same, would likely have put in for a transfer. But not Mr Radchenko, who stormed back to the tax inspectorate a few days later in the company, it seems, of a group of heavily armed men who work for a local governor, trying to gain entry to his office. Waiting there was a similarly armed gang who work for a local bank, whose owner is friendly to Mukhu Aliev, the president of Dagestan.