“The issue with Vavilov is that he was one of the reformers who switched to the oligarchic side,” said Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute.

Connections Among Neighbors

At the Time Warner Center, Mr. Vavilov and Ms. Tsaregradskaya needed little introduction, particularly in the ultraexpensive top floors, where a number of the Russian owners were linked through a tangled — one might even say Dostoevskian — web of relationships and business deals.

Before buying at the Time Warner Center, Mr. Vavilov had visited the unit of Oleg Baybakov, whose family members have owned three Time Warner Center apartments at various times. Mr. Baybakov made part of his fortune as an executive of Norilsk Nickel, the mining company acquired for a fraction of its value in the Loans for Shares program. In fact, he is one of several Time Warner owners with ties to the Norilsk deal, in which one of the winning partners was Mikhail Prokhorov, now a visible figure in New York as principal owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team.

Image Oleg Baybakov, left, and Maxim Finskiy in 2010.

Mr. Baybakov is primarily known in New York through his daughter, Maria Baibakova, a young socialite and art-scene fixture. Before helping foster his daughter’s art career, however, Mr. Baybakov had sought to establish her in the restaurant business. After plans for a downtown restaurant called Fum fell apart, Mr. Baybakov’s restaurant company sued his business partner to recoup his investment and collect $75,000 left in escrow.

When advised by one of the lawyers that the legal fees might exceed the amount in escrow, Mr. Baybakov said he did not care. “I will spend 10 times more and sue you,” he told the lawyer, according to a deposition. In the end, Mr. Baybakov failed to show up for trial, and so did his ex-wife, also a partner in the business. “She also apparently evinced a disregard for the court’s process,” said Justice Louis B. York of State Supreme Court, dismissing the case, according to court records.

The Baybakovs sold one of their Time Warner apartments, 74A in the north tower, to a shell company called Ff Property Management for $11 million in 2008. The Times traced the shell company to Maxim Finskiy, also a former Norilsk Nickel executive and a partner with Mr. Prokhorov in another mining company. The apartment was sold for $18 million last November.