The importance of the Kremlin-controlled piggy bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) is rising during this financial crisis, as the group becomes the government’s critical instrument in its efforts to re-nationalize a large slice of the economy from the country’s beleaguered elite business class. Eric Reguly at the Globe and Mail takes a quick look:

The financial crisis seems to have given the Kremlin the opportunity to reassert at least some control over the industries that were so haphazardly discarded during the Yeltsin era. The agent of influence is a government development agency called Vnesheconombank (VEB). The chairman of its supervisory board is – guess who – Mr. Putin. Some of Russia’s most powerful government officials, including the finance and transportation ministers, prop up the rest of the board.