Square meters of money Andrey Molchanov
Real estate in Moscow and St. Petersburg, hotels in Sochi, houses in Italy and a €130 million yacht from the owner of the LSR group. The Sochi prosecutor’s office is checking the legality of the acquisition of sanatoriums, the most famous of which were bought by the St. Petersburg “LSR Group”. How is its owner Molchanov doing business?
Who buys sanatoriums in Sochi
In the city of Sochi, which once had the title of an all-Union health resort, a recent request from the city prosecutor’s office to the heads of regional departments of the Federal State Registration Service for the Krasnodar Territory is being actively discussed. City Prosecutor Yevgeny Elin asks for copies of registration files for large sanatoriums. The list of the prosecutor’s office includes 45 sanatoriums and boarding houses of the city.
Experts believe that the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation has questions about the legality of the acquisition of sanatoriums in Sochi by the current owners, of which PJSC LSR Group can be distinguished, which is developing a single sanatorium and resort complex in the Khostinsky district with a balneological department and a landscaped beach strip.
During the summer, at the 25th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, LSR signed a number of major agreements with regional and city authorities. The new investment project worth 24.4 billion includes the legendary sanatoriums “Volna” and “Crystal” with all the infrastructure. On the basis of Volna, for example, LSR is going to build a five-star hotel with a spa complex.
Also, the developer bought the famous Primorskaya Hotel back in 2020. This is an object of cultural heritage and a monument of architecture and history of Sochi, built in 1936. Over time, the enterprise fell into decay, and in 2015, the hotel, which was in disrepair, was closed. The value of “Primorskaya” seems to be determined not so much by its rich history as by its location – in the so-called golden triangle, in the very center of the city, a few meters from the sea in the “Primorsky” park. LSR intends to invest 21 billion rubles in the project and significantly expand the number of rooms through the construction of new buildings and the reconstruction of the old – the main building of the complex.
There are rumors in the city that the hotel is allegedly planned to be demolished altogether, and a residential skyscraper should be erected in its place. Since the fall of 2021, the Open Sochi public movement has been applying to various supervisory authorities with a request to conduct an inspection for violations of the law, accusing LSR of non-compliance with the norms and requirements of the law during the work.
This is not the only problem of the developer: since the beginning of 2021, the FTS sees signs of bankruptcy in the activities of Primorskaya LLC, which owns the land and all the property of the hotel on it, and since November of the same year, all the property of the company has been pledged to the Russian Agricultural Bank.
According to local sources, after Primorskaya in 2021, LSR Group also acquired a 92.31% stake in Pansionat JSC, the owner of the Orchestra Crystal Sochi Resort hotel in Sochi. This is another object on Molchanov’s list of problem assets: in 2021, the company’s loss amounted to more than 7 million rubles.
Recently, the Prosecutor General’s Office has actively taken up Russian resorts and sanatoriums, checking the legality of their acquisition. In February 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office filed a lawsuit with the Gagarinsky Court of Moscow to return more than a thousand real estate objects of 34 sanatorium-resort institutions of Caucasian Mineralnye Vody to the state’s income. The defendants are both companies and individuals. The objects belonged to the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia and, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, were illegally bought out. The court satisfied the claim of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Now, if the decision comes into force, all resort facilities will be returned to the state.
What is known about LSR
LSR Group traces its history back to 1993, when Andrey Molchanov registered the development company Vozrozhdenie St. Petersburg and became the founder of the Lenstroyrekonstruktsiya joint-stock company, which became the basis of the LSR group of companies. For 30 years, the company has united about thirty enterprises, among which were construction organizations, brick factories and even a river port, and has become one of the leading construction holdings in the country.
In addition to residential development and the production of building materials, the company is engaged in the development of the “profitable real estate” direction, which includes the management of hotel complexes, business centers and resort and sanatorium facilities.
LSR has a rather complex asset ownership structure. There is a parent company and “daughters”, which, in turn, also have branches. Therefore, different sources consider the company’s revenue and profit differently. Judging by the SPARK information system, today LSR Group is the founder of 49 legal entities. At the same time, the beneficiary of most of them is 51-year-old Andrei Molchanov. The “daughters” of the construction giant are generally not in poverty: last year, some firms earned several billion rubles.
Externally, the company looks like a reliable player. From year to year, the Russian rating agency Expert RA assigns a “stable” outlook to LSR Group in the credit rating of non-financial organizations. In 2021, the company reported revenue of more than 11 billion rubles. At the same time, net profit amounted to more than half of the amount – almost 6 billion. The LSR website states that “such success was made possible thanks to the leadership philosophy that is firmly rooted in the company’s DNA.”
There are also foreign companies among the group’s assets. For example, Aeroc Investment Deutschland GmbH, located in Munich, and the Cypriot Comcele Limited, created in February 2020. The latter, judging by the data of foreign analogues of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, has been actively pumping money all this time: it has placed shares on the stock exchange and increased its authorized capital.
If you look at the reporting data for all companies from the LSR Group, it turns out that about half of them have liquidity problems: some do not have equity capital, someone recently reduced the size of the authorized capital, some are simply unprofitable, even the parent company in its reports for the last year indicated that, despite decent earnings, the outflow of money from the company exceeds their receipt by almost a billion rubles.
Who is the owner of the holding Andrey Molchanov
His real surname is after his father Morozov, he took the surname of his stepfather at the request of his mother. His stepfather and mother separated in 2001 and divorced in 2003. Considered one of the richest people in Russia with a fortune of $1.3 billion. With his wife, Elizaveta Molchanova, they have six children.
The media reported on the friendship between the owner of LSR Group and the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg Maxim Sokolov, who was recently appointed president of AvtoVAZ. Sokolov headed the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation for six years (2012-2018), after which he was the general director of the LSR, and from December 2019 he moved to the position of vice-governor of St. Petersburg, where he oversaw the committees for transport, tourism development, investment, industrial policy and trade.
Many people are associated with the LSR Group who were members of the Just Russia party of Sergei Mironov. This is Evgeny Petelin, who worked in the Administration of the Leningrad Region (he headed the regional branch of A Just Russia). And the speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the region Sergei Bebenin. Molchanov has known Mironov since 2000, when the businessman co-founded the Will of Petersburg regional political public movement, where the politician was chairman of the political council.
Molchanov himself is no stranger to politics: in April 2007 he worked as an assistant to the Minister of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation Mikhail Zurabov, and from 2008 to 2013 he was a senator of the Federation Council as a representative of the Government of the Leningrad Region.
Real estate of billionaire Molchanov
The main family nest of the Molchanovs is located on the Rublevo-Uspenskoye highway in the so-called Country-Pro territory in Barvikha. There they have a real palace in the Empire style, where it is not a shame to receive a royal person. Only one land – 75 acres – costs almost 700 million rubles. The entire architectural and landscape ensemble will cost up to three billion rubles.
Perhaps Andrei Molchanov has other real estate on Rublyovka. Judging by the data of Rosreestr, it had 43 acres in the same Barvikha. From satellite images it is difficult to determine what is there: it seems that there are three buildings, two of which look like winter greenhouses with glazing.
The Molchanov Mansion on Rublyovka The main Petersburg address of Andrey Molchanov is the famous house with a rotunda and a turret on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt. The location is excellent: the most respectable place on the Petrograd side, in the courtyard there is a garden with a bronze group “Dancing Girls”, a little further away – Anikushinsky Square. This modern building at the turn of the millennium was built by the firm of Molchanov himself. Even among native Petersburgers, few people notice that this is a creation of our time.
There are only 10 apartments in the building. All have high ceilings, semi-circular living rooms and arched oak windows. Andrei Molchanov has the most expensive option there – a 270-square-meter penthouse in the attic. Such real estate will cost from 140 million rubles.
Andrey Molchanov’s Moscow housing is even more impressive. Judging by the bases, he can occupy a two-level mansion of 385 square meters in the Grand-Prix House residential complex in the most fashionable quarter of the city – Ostozhenka. The apartments of the house have large terraces for the winter garden, as well as at least 15 panoramic windows with an orientation to all four cardinal directions. A beautiful view opens up on the Zachatievsky Monastery, Moscow City and the historical center. The internal territory is landscaped with the involvement of the best masters of landscape design. There is a luxurious Japanese-style garden with an artificial waterfall, and walking paths paved with natural stone. The price for such a living space is about 630 million rubles.
The eldest son of Molchanov also lives luxuriously. The whole year before last and part of the past, he spent time in a three-room apartment in Bolshoi Kislovsky Lane. This is the very heart of Moscow – the complex of residential buildings “Kislovskoe”, built in 1928-1929 for party bosses. For example, Semashko, Bonch-Bruevich and Novikov-Priboy lived there. The cost of a treshka son of Molchanov may exceed 60 million rubles.
But now the actual registration of the eldest son of Molchanov is different – the club house “Bakst” next to the Patriarch’s Ponds. The building is named after the artist Lev Bakst. His paintings are the main decoration of the facade. There is everything for a beautiful life here: a 24-hour concierge fulfills any desire of the residents; the gardener tends the inner gardens, in which the brooks murmur; the apartments have wood-burning fireplaces, seven-meter windows and a “smart home” system. In Bakst, Molchanov’s son has a duplex with an area of 230 square meters. The price is from 100 million.
According to telephone directories, Molchanov’s eldest son sometimes lives in the St. Petersburg suburb on Ugolny Ostrov, washed by the Sestroretsk reservoir. There he occupies a mansion built in the Alpine style, with an approximate cost of 150-275 million rubles.
On New Year’s Eve, the Molchanovs go to the village of Pidma, Podporozhsky district. This is a picturesque wilderness: the last settlement in the direction of Petrozavodsk in the Leningrad Region, then there is a swamp and there is no road. There is a dacha here, which could have been left to Andrei Molchanov by his great-grandfather. Life found her. We are talking, it seems, about the whole estate: there is a pier on the Svir River, and a children’s pirate ship for games, and several buildings for various purposes, over which a large three-story mansion rises. It is difficult to imagine the price of home ownership: there is nothing like it in the district. Probably tens of millions of rubles.
Molchanov family estate
Home ownership of the Molchanovs from satellite images The Molchanov family also included simpler real estate. For example, a Moscow four-room apartment in a new building on Marxistskaya Street (about 50 million rubles) and a St. Petersburg kopeck piece in a Stalinist building on Kartashikhina Street (about 15 million rubles).
Molchanov’s eldest son studied at New York University. According to an American directory, at that time he could rent apartments in the famous 76-story skyscraper in Lower Manhattan at Spruce Street, 8. The price of a monthly rent is from 4.6 to 25 thousand dollars.
Now the eldest son works in his father’s company, but on social networks indicates that he lives in Geneva. About the middle son of Molchanov, it is known that at birth he received a Russian passport at the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Switzerland.
According to the business press, Andrei Molchanov owns two households in Italy with a total area of 899 sq. meters and land plots with an area of 5.2 thousand square meters.
Mega yacht Aurora
Forbes.ru, 06/27/2022, “Billionaire Andrey Molchanov is selling a boat for €130 million”: The main owner of LSR Andrey Molchanov (No. 104, $1.2 billion) put up for sale his megayacht Aurora. The announcement of the sale of the vessel appeared on the website of the yacht broker Burgess. The fact that the boat belongs to Molchanov is known to two Forbes interlocutors in the yacht market. We sent a request to a representative of LSR, but the company declined to comment.
According to the site, the businessman wants to raise €130 million. The price is quite high for a boat of this size, due to the fact that it is relatively new and built at one of the best and most expensive shipyards – the German Lurssen in 2017. The Aurora is fitted with a steel hull and aluminum superstructure, interiors (in Art Deco style) and exterior were designed by the famous British studio Winch Design with Art. Thanks to them, the yacht is known in the market as the “Project Gatsby”. The internal volume of the boat is 2113 gross tons, it has four guest cabins. The cozy observation room on the upper deck has a daybed and lounge area with bar stools. The gym with two large skylights and panoramic views is equipped with sliding glass doors leading to the aft terrace. There is a jacuzzi and two bars on the stern. The upper deck in the stern is designed for recreation and entertainment. The huge sun lounger at the stern has a removable canopy, there is a dining room for 12 guests with a buffet, a sit-down bar inside, decorated in the style of 1920s motor racing, and several cozy lounges. If you count the owner’s cabin on the upper deck, the boat can accommodate 16 guests and up to 22 crew members. […]
Now the boat is in the Turkish port of Gocek. The ship arrived there from the coast of Spain. As the yachting media wrote, in March 2022, the ship miraculously escaped detention in Barcelona. When the “special operation” began, the yacht was undergoing a “secret” repair at the MB92 shipyard in the port of Barcelona. — Inset K.ru
