Princess Pushy pushes off

Yesterday I wrote about the intimate links between Austrian politicians and Putin. Austria being a long way away, a reader asked me to name some similarly connected figure closer to home.

Generally, following Burke’s prescription, I try to respond to my readers’ interests, not necessarily their wishes. This time, however, destiny intervened.

An announcement was made that Prince and Princess Michael of Kent (whom Princess Anne once called ‘Princess Pushy’, and the name stuck) are withdrawing from their official royal duties. The news left me cold since it’s only their unofficial dealings that interest me.

And these enable me to make a start on the aforementioned request. But first I must declare a personal interest. In 2012 I wrote the article below in The Daily Mail, which put an end to my involvement with the paper. The Palace complained, and little insignificant I was out on my ear – especially since I already was on notice for getting on the wrong side of PinkNews.

Here’s that article, with a few current comments attached.

In Russian business a killing doesn’t just mean making a lot of money. It’s a way of settling disagreements, enforcing contracts, collecting debts or just gaining a competitive advantage.

I don’t know which of those motives inspired the murder of the Moscow furniture tycoon Mikhail Kravchenko, and frankly I don’t care. Life has always been cheap in Russia, and it’s now even cheaper than it was, say, 50 years ago. People these days can be murdered for most trivial reasons, making it hard to second-guess the real one.

I only wish that members of our royal family didn’t get embroiled, however tangentially, in the murky world of Russian gangland. That’s precisely what the Russian business world is – and what it can only be in a country that has little tradition of legality. Without a just, independent and enforceable legal system, free enterprise is gangsterism. To this rule there are no exceptions.

That doesn’t mean that every rich man in Russia is a crime lord. Some are, some aren’t. But even those who aren’t have to play the game whose rules are set by the Mafia, operating under the aegis of that ultimate protection racket, the country’s government.

I don’t know much about the late Mr Kravchenko. If newspaper accounts are to be believed, he built his chain of furniture stores on the Ikea model. No direct Mafia links have been mentioned, but every Russian millionaire is tainted, if only by association. A pub landlord who pays protection money to the local hoodlum is unwittingly tarred by the same brush.

That’s why those British figures who stand for something other than just themselves should steer clear of any personal association with so-called Russian businessmen. One realises that this would be too much to expect from the likes of Lord Mandelson, whose financial shenanigans even within Britain have twice got him sacked from the government, and who is now friends with the Russian aluminium king Deripaska. But one is entitled to expect probity from members of the reigning dynasty that’s supposed to embody the historical sagacity and virtue of its realm.

Yet Prince and Princess Michael insist on hobnobbing with various Russians whose power and wealth by definition have a dubious provenance. Speculation has been rife that the Princess’s relationship with Kravchenko went beyond the ‘close friendship’ to which she owns up. I really don’t care one way or the other – though most men would be upset if their wives were photographed holding hands with a younger man in Venice. Venice isn’t Milan; one doesn’t go there on business. But let the gossip columns ponder this. For me a ‘close friendship’ is bad enough.

It may be entirely coincidental that Princess Michael’s ‘close friend’ got riddled with bullets during the same week in which it was revealed that Prince Michael had accepted a gift of £320,000 from Boris Berezovsky. Then again, it may not be.

Berezovsky, Putin’s friend and patron in the past, is now his worst enemy. This means that Boris can’t show his face anywhere near Russia and has to live in England with a platoon of bodyguards in close attendance. Occasionally peeking out from his assorted fortresses, he’s still meddling in Russian politics, usually by financing Putin’s opponents.

Berezovsky has claimed that his gift to Prince Michael was just a friendly gesture, offering help to a man in need. The extent of the grace-and-favour royal’s deprivation is neither immediately obvious nor particularly important. What is significant is that, even if the Russian exile had been driven by uncharacteristically noble impulses, the Prince acted imprudently by accepting money whose origin is in some eyes questionable. And Putin isn’t above sending a not-so-subtle message to the princely family: stay away or else.

Nor is it out of the question that this KGB colonel may see the Prince as a potential rival. The monarchist sentiment is strong in Russia, and it’s getting stronger. And Prince Michael has often been rumoured as a possible tsar, what with the immediate Romanov dynasty having been wiped out in 1918.

In all fairness, it has to be said that the Prince does little to dispel such rumours. He doesn’t mind, for example, emphasising his already remarkable resemblance to his second cousin twice removed, Tsar Nicholas II. To that end His Royal Highness has grown a beard styled à la Nicholas and has taken the trouble of learning Russian to a reasonable standard. His consultancy has had business dealings with Russia for many years, and the Prince has been awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship, a decoration for particularly friendly foreigners.

Being friendly to Russia is one thing; being friendly to her ruling regime is quite another. Apart from its transparent criminality, this regime is fickle in its affections. That it awards a medal to the husband today doesn’t at all preclude the possibility that it might ‘whack’ (to use Putin’s favourite word) the wife’s ‘close friend’ tomorrow.

I’m not speculating whether it did or didn’t. All I’m saying is that it’s best not to come in close contact with dirt, for some of it may rub off on one. It’s best to exercise prudence – unless of course the Prince and Princess wish to strike yet another blow for republicanism in Britain.

Since that article was written for a reputable publication, it was couched in polite terms. I could have gone further then, and I can certainly do so now. After all, the intervening 10 years have added corrective touches to the old story.

For one thing, the security precautions Berezovsky took at the time of writing didn’t work. A few months later he was found garrotted in his bathroom. The official judgement was suicide, which was later changed to an open verdict. That open verdict is an open secret to anyone who knows anything about Putin’s MO: Berezovsky was ‘whacked’.

That didn’t prevent Prince Michael from flogging access to Putin and his entourage for large sums of money, reputed to be £10,000 a day. You must understand that such access is a precious commodity that the paranoid and hypochondriac chieftain doesn’t grant lightly. And he certainly wouldn’t accept mediation from just anybody.

There had to be a quid pro quo there somewhere, and it went beyond the piles of quid both Vlad and HRH could make as a result of such representation. Would it be too much of a stretch to suggest that Prince Michael not only gained but also offered access, making it easier for Putin’s emissaries to infiltrate the British establishment?

The Prince has long-standing links with Russia, and until recently he served as the patron of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, a transparent KGB front. And he still remains an ambassador and shareholder of RemitRadar, a money-transfer firm run by former KGB officer Sergei Markov (“There’s no such thing as ex-KGB. This is for life,” Putin once said.)

Just last year Prince Michael was caught on camera peddling access to Putin. His prospective clients were two undercover reporters posing as Korean gold traders. The Prince assured them that his Russian links would “bring them some benefit”, while his associate told them to keep the transaction hush-hush.

For decades now, the royal couple have relied on Russia for a great part of their income. And by all accounts, Princess Pushy was also attached to Russia emotionally, not just commercially.

I hope that one day all Russian links of the British social and political elite will be properly investigated. I doubt it though: people don’t like to ask questions when they know in advance they’ll hate the answers.