Alexander Lebedev, the Russian owner of Britain's Independent and London Evening Standard newspapers, suffered another bruising blow to his business empire today after police carried out a raid on his luxury hotel in Ukraine.
Dozens of tax officers burst into the More resort in Alushta, on Crimea's south-eastern coast, early yesterday. They seized documents and computers. Officials from Ukraine's SBU security service swarmed over the hotel today.
The raid came 48 hours after masked, gun-toting special forces stormed Lebedev's National Reserve Bank in Moscow.
Russian police said the search on Tuesday was connected to a criminal investigation into employees from another bank.
Lebedev today told the Guardian it had been a bad week. But he said he would not bow to forces within Russia's murky power structure who were apparently hellbent on making him flee.