Monday, 22 August 2011
Appeal from Defrauded Real Estate Co-Investors
We, co-investors of the “residential” apartment block, located in Russia, StP, Kolomyagi, Block 12B, Building 11 (Stage 2), have no other possible way to influence the outrageous situation concerning construction of our apartment block and are compelled to apply to community and mass media for support:
Our apartment block is located at the crossing of Scherbakova street and Novoselkovskaya street, close to the Juvenile Railway. The block is designed for 8 floors and 124 flats, with commercial premises for shops envisaged on the ground floor. The Google coordinates are: 60° 01'41.69"NL , 30°17'36.82"EL.
Construction of our apartment block started in 2007, the Sales office for the project opening the same year. The Investor, Developer and Vendor of the project was CJSC Okstroy (Saint Petersburg), represented by its General Director, Dubrovin Valery Viktorovich – a person, as we later learnt, who has quite a few similar frauds under his belt. CJSC Okstroy did not carry out construction with own resources, but employed for this purpose a General Contractor, UNR-47, represented by its Director-General, Belik Gennady Vladimirovich. The mutual payments between these companies were performed as follows: the General Constructor, UNR-47, carried out construction works and CJSC Okstroy paid them by handing over the “square meters” (i.e. did not pay money but handed over the commercial premises and flats constructed in this apartment block). The construction process was very slow and going on for 4 years, during that time all the flats were sold out and commercial facilities handed over to UNR-47. As soon as Dubrovin Valery Viktorovich had received the money from selling all the flats, all construction works started to wind down and in the end halted whatsoever. By the moment when construction works stopped only half of our apartment block was built.
The municipal supervision and control over development of co-investment construction projects is within authority of the Construction Committee of Saint Petersburg Administration. The Committee’s Head is Semenenko Vyacheslav Vassylievich.
Resolving our problem is direct responsibility of Deputy Head of the Committee, Kuznetsov Vladimir Alekseevich, and Head of Co-Investors Department, Ostrovsky Oleg Borisovich. Many of us believe that these state officials cover up for Dubrovin Valery Viktorovich (Director of CJSC Okstroy) or are directly involved in his schemes.
At the last (17.08.2011) extended meeting at the Committee, chaired by Kuznetsov V.A., it was suggested to us that we, defrauded co-investors, should form a house developing cooperative and finalize construction of our block ourselves, at our own expense. Moreover, (and we consider this as the ultimate cynicism) they try to convince us that the cooperative should be chaired by none other but a representative of CJC Okstroy. In another case this land plot together with the unfinished block will be offered for sale at municipal auction. That means the Construction Committee’s officials in terms of an ultimatum offered us to pay the fraud additionally.
According to our assessment the cost of the construction completion is 150-200 mln roubles, which means each co-investor will have to additionally pay more than 1 mln roubles, though we have already made ALL contractual payments. Where are we supposed to get the money from? Many of us sold all other property to buy a flat in this ill-fated block and now have to live in apartments they rent, some of us have moved from other cities.
The trick of the guys from the Construction Committee is very clear to us: as soon as a house developing cooperative is formed all the responsibility for our block will immediately devolve upon our shoulders, whereas CJSC Okstroy and the Construction Committee will free themselves from being responsible for the outrageous situation they created. Such scenario has already been proved by experience. A House Developing Cooperative was formed at the “Kristall” project of CJSC Okstroy. People were ready to finalize the construction at their own expense, but the Construction Committee did not issue the permit for construction, while all responsibility was taken off CJSC Okstroy. As soon as officials suggested that we form a cooperative, some of our co-investors formed a group of supporters of the idea. This group is headed by Boubenko Alexander Yevgenyevich. We have information that Mr.Boubenko is collaborating with the Director of CJSC Okstroy and has ALREADY appointed himself as chair of this not yet existing house developing cooperative.
As of today, 21.08.2011, CJSC Okstroy are going through a bankruptcy process, the last court hearing is scheduled for November 2011 and from that time on this company will seize to exist. All the money and assets of CJSC Okstroy have already been withdrawn by its General Director from the company’s ownership and there is nothing on the company accounts now. Thus, only from us they stole about 300-400 mln roubles.
Yes, we have appealed to the Public Prosecution Office, as well as to the Investigative Committee, but no cases were opened against the criminals, under various pretexts. Yes, we have written to President and to many others, but all our appeals were forwarded on to Saint Petersburg Administration, which, in its turn forwarded those to the Construction Committee. We have even appealed to the political party Yedinaya Rossiya (United Russia), but they could not help us...
We have used all available ways to solve our problem, with only hunger-strike or self immolation left…
Dear readers! We would like to ask you to distribute our appeal by any possible ways available to you, as this is our last chance to seek justice and find a solution to our problem, which is of high significance to us.
With hope for the best, defrauded citizens.
*** Disclaimer. All said in this text represents our subjective evaluative opinion and we have no intention of offending or maligning anyone. We admit that we can be mistaken in our evaluation of people mentioned in the appeal, and therefore give our apologies in advance. ***
