Are the colossal profits of businessmen Denis Kitaev and Boris Azarenka connected with their “omnivorousness” in the market and, probably, considerable connections among the capital’s officials?

Boris Azarenka and Denis Kitaev, the owners of a major Moscow developer in the luxury real estate segment, continue to quietly “stuff their pockets” with the help of connections in the capital’s real estate market and beyond.

According to the correspondent The Moscow Post, the Monochrome company bought a business center on Shablovka (Moscow) from JSC GPZ-2. The cost of the transaction amounted to 13.5 billion rubles. On this territory, instead of the business center, Vesper, a company engaged in the construction of luxury real estate and associated with Monochrome (the key beneficiary is Denis Kitaev), will build a residential complex.

It is assumed that IFD “Kapital”, which is trying to connect with the co-owners of LUKOIL Leonid Fedun and Vagit Alekperov, also intends to cede the remaining property in the center of Moscow to the same developer, despite the fact that experts already predict discontent from local residents who oppose the sealing buildings of Khamovniki.

Non-public buyers of “antiques”

This is not the first time that the company has bought out old buildings for demolition and construction of a residential complex – in 2019, information appeared that Vesper was going to acquire the premises of the Mashinoapparat plant, located in Bolshoi Savvinsky Lane in Khamovniki and engaged in the development and production of non-contact electric motors. It is interesting that representatives of Vesper do not comment on either this or the aforementioned deal. They are generally not very public figures. Why does an elite developer prefer to keep a low profile instead of advertising a project?

Possible patrons and “excesses”

The main owners of the company are Boris Azarenka and Denis Kitaev. Mr. Kitaev’s mother, Nina Kitaeva, once worked for a major Moscow developer, Vladimir Resin, who called her his “right hand,” wrote “Version”.

Nina Kitaeva also held the post of head of the department for coordinating the activities of the capital’s construction complex, in this position she could manage to sign off some “tasty” territories to her son. No wonder that the son of such an influential person followed in her footsteps. True, unfortunately, the partners of Kitaev and Azarenka cannot do without scandals in the field of professional activity.

Boris Azarenka and Denis Kitaev. Photo: https://vespermoscow.com/Vladimir Vasilchikov

For example, according to the author of the Dogileva blog on the website “Echo of Moscow”, allegedly it was the office of the latter, having bought out a small building next to their house on Bolshoy Kozikhinsky Lane, that they decided to occupy the territory belonging to the courtyard of their house, and after the greed. As if the mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin himself, gave an order that developers confine themselves to the boundaries of the territory allocated to them. Only all this did not help, and Messrs. Kitaev and Azarenka continued to build residential complexes where they pleased.

In 2016, Unitex, which is 49% owned by Vesper, bought the building of the First Model Printing House in the center of Moscow at auction from the Federal Property Management Agency, later announced plans, as usual, to demolish the house and build up the territory, but something went wrong plan. The Federal Property Management Agency decided that the building was sold at a greatly reduced price and demanded that it be returned to the state, which was done.

Kitaev and Azarenka did not seem to like this, so they sued the Federal Property Management Agency, demanding the return of the two billion rubles paid for the house. In 2020, the epic ended not in favor of the developer, and other Vesper projects could also be under attack, because rumors that they get “tidbits” of the capital’s land for nothing have long surrounded the company. But while the developer manages to “get out of the water dry.”

Vesper was founded in 2013. Prior to this, Kitaev worked through Evocom (created in 2006 by Kitaev and Azarenka), which did about the same thing. In 2007-2008, she bought 2.7 hectares from the structures of Leonard Blavatnik with an unfinished facility on Kashirskoye Shosse for the construction of a business park with an area of 310.8 thousand square meters. m. In 2020 Vesper, according to data “Interfax”was in third place in terms of revenue in the segment of business class developers.

Now the company’s portfolio includes 15 projects, including the Fairmont & Vesper hotel and residential complex, St. Nickolas on Nikolskaya Street, Bulgakov in Bolshoi Kozikhinsky Lane and others. The stunning success of a fairly young company can be explained not only by the connections of the mother of the shareholder Kitaev. In 2014, Boris Mintz came to work in their company – the same one who dealt with local self-government issues in the administration of the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and who in 2020 was arrested in absentia and put on the international wanted list for embezzling 34 billion rubles of funds from Otkritie Bank.

The developers also worked with Yuri Zhukov, the founder of the PIK group, another major Moscow developer, whose leadership (Sergey Gordeev) is credited with connections in the Moscow government. He bought Vesper and a section of Berezhkovskaya embankment, previously owned by Alex Sekler’s Liral company, who had long wanted to get rid of the asset after it became known that the industrial zone would be reorganized as part of a comprehensive sustainable development project.

There is an opinion that the site went to Kitaev and Azarenka at a significantly reduced price, since they had to participate in resolving the conflict between Liral and SSS Express LLC – the latter accused Liral of raider seizure of the territory – wrote “Version”.

The quieter you go, the further you’ll get

As we can see, Messrs. Kitaev and Azarenka know how to choose their partners. Perhaps behind them, too, you can find much more than the supposedly unfriendly “absorption” attributed to them of the territory that did not belong to them near their site. Because of this, they seem to be hiding, collecting profits from the purchase of plots through, apparently, offices that are not strangers to them?

There is another influential lady in the Kitaev family, the developer’s sister Maria. As writes “Version”the former host of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company managed to acquire connections at the very “top” and this could help Kitaev not only get profitable areas for development, including within walking distance from the Kremlin, but also solve emerging problems.

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