sentences:  After the end of the Cold War, they set up the Novator Production-Commercial Bureau as a defence conversion enterprise to fund the work of the Design Bureau, but the company struggled financially throughout the 1990s.On 20 March 1996 General Designer Valentin Smirnov was murdered, possibly as a result of discovering fraud in the company.In 2001 Novator was amalgamated with other companies involved in SAM production, into the Almaz-Antey.