The company “Donstroy” is called the leading developer of the capital. Indeed, the developer, who has been operating in the Moscow real estate market since 1994, has several successful projects related to elite, premium and business class housing: for example,
- “Scarlet Sails”,
- “House on Mosfilmovskaya”,
- “Heart of the capital”
and other residential complexes.
However, if you scroll through the search results a little further than the bravura official statements of the company about the commissioning of the next square meters of the capital’s real estate, it becomes obvious that the sky over the headquarters of Donstroy is not so cloudless, as the company is trying to demonstrate to potential clients.
Elite scandals
So, for example, the Scarlet Sails residential complex near the Schukinskaya metro station, which was built from 2001 to 2017 and consists of six buildings with a height of 27 to 48 floors, is known not only for mentioning in one of the books of science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko from the series “Patrols”. This LCD is also infamous for astronomical prices per square meter of living space, the arbitrariness of the management company, “from the ceiling” raising prices for maintenance of elite housing, and even human casualties. In January 2016, the daughter of the famous TV presenter Yevgeny Kochergin, 36-year-old Irina Volodina, died here. The woman entered the elevator and fell down from the height of the seventh floor. According to the official version, the broken cable became the culprit of the tragedy, according to the unofficial version, the floor of the elevator cabin failed under the passenger.
And more recently, at the end of May this year, part of the facade cladding collapsed from one of the buildings of the Scarlet Sails residential complex. The debris that fell from a height of the sixth floor landed on parked cars. It was only by luck that none of the people were hurt. Just wondering, after all this, does anyone else want to buy an apartment in Scarlet Sails?
Not without scandals in the residential complex “Heart of the Capital”, built on Shelepikhinskaya embankment. Here, the residents of the first and second phases of building a residential complex “by inheritance” from the developer got different management companies. As a result, the “Central Park” residential complex, designated in the project declaration as a “green common area”, was surrounded by a fence made of corrugated board and specially hired security guards did not let the residents of the houses of the first stage go there, because it was “not allowed”. It is currently unknown whether the conflict was resolved, but judging by the number of “404 errors (page not found)” in the search results, one gets the impression that in Donstroy they prefer not to settle scandalous situations, but to sweep them under the carpet, simply cleaning them up information space with objectionable publications.
Nevertheless, on sites that publish reviews, you can get acquainted with the popular opinion about this developer. Reviews, to put it mildly, are mixed, and a few flattering entries, allegedly from satisfied customers, frankly look like custom-made ones. Here is just one of them, and not the most negative among the other comments.
“IC “Donstroy” publishes only good news on its official website and happily reports about another handed over house or a running fountain, but for some reason hides from everyone the real problems of the residents of its residential complex, for some reason there is no information about the very long connection of “Scarlet Sails” “to city heating networks, about the constant complaints of Triumph Palace residents about the management company and the lawlessness that is going on there. Do not trust the information on the official website, if you want to know the truth, go to the forums of already commissioned residential complexes from Donstroy IC and read real problems of residents, there should not be such a mess in elite residential complexes, ”writes user Fedor Sergienko.
Instead of drawings – diagrams?
However, if you still look through the search results for the query “Donstroy”, it turns out that the low quality and inflated prices of housing being built by this developer are, as they say, half the trouble. Much more surprising are the various multi-way schemes, murky scams and corruption scandals associated with the “leading developer of Moscow”, as well as its financial partner, VTB Bank.
It should be clarified here that Donstroy is a group of companies, therefore, without going into details, we can say that Donstroy, Don-Stroy and Don-Stroy Invest are the names of the holding structures, in general, one and Same. As for the “financial partnership”, VTB gained control over Donstroy back in 2009 for a symbolic sum of 500 rubles. At that time, the developer’s debts to the bank exceeded $500 million. It would seem, why would a backbone bank with state participation need a loss-making “pocket developer”? But he also found a use.
For example, SK Don-Stroy JSC is the founder of Donstroy Invest LLC, which owns Amethyst LLC, which in turn owns two LLCs – Hunting Season and Hunting Season +, for which hunting grounds are registered in Rubtsovsky and Rzhevsky districts of the Tver region Both hunting estates are consistently unprofitable.
Another situation caused a scandal at the end of last year. It has long been no secret to anyone that the land in Moscow is literally “golden”. For example, a square meter of living space in the Presnensky district of the capital, as of November 2021, was estimated at 524 thousand rubles, but then Donstroy “successfully turned up” a plot of 4.8 hectares on Makeeva Street, 7, owned by TsENKI JSC “(Center for the Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure) – to the structure of Roskosmos. It was planned to build 100-120 thousand square meters at this address. m of housing, however, questions arose with the legality of the transfer of the site for development, after which a scandal erupted with the proceedings, and all the information available from open sources was again tried to be swept under the carpet.
And this is only a small part, to put it mildly, of the dubious deeds of the “leading developer of Moscow.” In total, during its work, Donstroy has become a defendant for almost two hundred trials, in most of which he participated as a defendant. Frankly, the company’s reputation is currently so damaged that persistent rumors have long been circulating that VTB plans to bankrupt its “pocket developer” (read – “laundry”). But for now, it seems that the time has not yet come. Is it worth doing business with such a developer? You decide.
