Princess Michael’s assassinated friend was in conflict with Russian ministry

Days before he died, Kravchenko had given an interview to a Russian current
affairs magazine in which he bemoaned the difficulties facing small and
medium-sized businesses in Russia. He said: “In Russia it is all a business
can do to survive – with the exception of those closely linked to the state.
Loans are expensive, money is expensive, so furniture retailers do not
develop.”

He appeared to have been under intense pressure after his factory was raided
by officers working for the interior ministry. “Misha was pressed hard, but
he did not give up”, said one acquaintance, Dmitry Potapenko, the managing
partner of Management Development Group. “Now we can most likely expect the
seizure of the factory, and then after two to three resales it will pass
into the hands of the real buyer.”

But Svetlana Saveleva, head of public relations at March 8, said Kravchenko
appeared to be in good spirits in the past few weeks and no one at the
company was aware of any threats against him.

Police believe that at least two contract killers were involved in the murder.
Bullets from two different weapons were reportedly found. Kravchenko was
ambushed in his Mercedes, shot in the chest, then dragged out of the car and
shot in the head at close range, investigators believe. According to some
reports, Kravchenko was not alone in the car at the time of the killing. But
who the passenger was, and what became of them, remains a mystery.

Kravchenko was a widower following the death of his wife and their
seven-year-old daughter in a car accident in 2001, which was caused by
another vehicle’s axle snapping.

He set up March 8 in the 1990s, making sofas using old Soviet-era equipment.
It became one of the largest furniture retailers in Europe, with five
factories and 100 stores across Russia and other former Soviet countries. A
spokesman for Prince and Princess Michael of Kent said he did not yet know
whether they intended to attend Kravchenko’s funeral.

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