The state corporation DOM.RF plans to spend 135 million rubles on an advertising campaign for the sale of land plots. Ideally, she should sell the land so that mass housing construction can then be carried out on it. However, until now, all such sales were, to put it mildly, dubious.
During the advertising campaign, the state corporation plans to promote 304 real estate objects to be sold in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Leningrad regions, Khabarovsk and Altai territories, as well as in other regions. DOM.RF has been selling federal lands for more than a year. Only now the results of such sales so far cause a certain amount of skepticism. The fruits of these successes are often used not by ordinary Russians in need of housing, but by especially close officials and developers.
Sale for your
One such scandal erupted several years ago in Vladivostok. It turned out that tidbits of land went to structures affiliated with regional authorities. So, a plot for 210 million rubles, on which it is planned to build seven high-rise buildings, went to a certain Renaissance Active LLC. According to local media reports, the company is owned by Nadezhda Epova, who, in turn, is associated with the family of the former mayor of Vladivostok, Igor Pushkarev. Also, three land plots in the area of Patrokl Bay immediately went to SZ Patrokl LLC, the main founder of which is the Tigr group, controlled by the former governor of the region Sergey Darkin. The owner of two more plots in the same area was a certain Adonis LLC, owned by Lyudmila Suleeva, the wife of the former deputy of the local Legislative Assembly and the founder of the Remi retail chain, Dmitry Suleev.
Businessman and former chairman of the Committee on Economic Policy and Municipal Property of the Vladivostok Duma Dmitry Suleev received his minute of fame back in 2012. Then the deputy was kidnapped and kept for two days in the box of a garage-building cooperative, demanding a ransom of 100 million rubles. The wife of the kidnapped person then claimed that the kidnapping could be connected with an attempted raider seizure of some assets belonging to Suleyev.
In total, over the past few years, DOM.RF in Vladivostok has been preparing for sale plots with a total area of 60 hectares worth 1.8 billion rubles. Public activists of the city claim that many of these lands were originally located in a forested area, which, despite the protests of residents, was anyway given for housing construction.
A similar story happened in Moscow. In 2018, the corporation was engaged in the sale of a site on Sadovnicheskaya Street, which is on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Defense. As a result, the lot was sold for more than 2 billion rubles. And the winner of the auction and the owner of the site in the very center of the capital, in the middle of Balchug Island, where any developer dreams of building their object, was the unknown Citizen LLC with an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles, which did not sell a single some famous project in the capital. According to Vedomosti, the company was allegedly created specifically for a specific auction – the date of registration of the LLC is January 1, 2018. A certain Alexander Leonov was listed as the owner of Citizen in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, and Igor Pyshkin acted as a representative of the company who directly participated in the auction. A businessman with the same name and surname was also the general director of the Fort company, which, according to unofficial information, could be associated with Vitaly Yusufov. That is the name of the son of the former Russian Energy Minister Igor Yusufov. In favor of the version that it was he who could be behind the deal to acquire the land plot of the Ministry of Defense is also evidenced by the fact that Yusufov Jr. had long-standing ties with the military department. In 2010, Vitaly Yusufov’s company Aykominvest, as part of a business partnership with Defense Ministry-affiliated Voentelecom, established Osnova Telecom, which at that time began developing LTE networks.
Be that as it may, but any specialist more or less knowledgeable in the layouts of the real estate market should have been alerted by the participation of an obscure company in the super-profitable competition.
Bypassing the master plan
The land auction in Voronezh was also marked by scandal. In 2021, a 1.1 hectare site in the Leninsky district of the city was put up for auction. The initial cost of the lot was 47.1 million rubles. Local experts, however, drew attention to one “small” problem. The thing is that this land was intended for the construction of a kindergarten. “The documentation on limiting the use of this territory states that, in accordance with the general plan of Voronezh, the site is located within the boundaries of the functional zone of specialized public development, which fully corresponds to the territory of the site itself. Also, according to the master plan, the planned placement of an object of local importance is indicated there – a preschool educational organization for 280 places, ”lawyer Sergei Kardashov told the local press at the time.
DOM.RF has been selling federal lands for more than a year. Only now the results of such sales so far cause a certain amount of skepticism. The fruits of these successes are often used not by ordinary Russians in need of housing, but by especially close officials and developers
Representatives of the corporation “DOM.RF” in response stated that these facts could not interfere with putting the site up for auction. As a result, the prosecutor’s office of the Voronezh region intervened in the dispute, which promised to conduct an appropriate check and find out all the details of a possible land dispute. However, the results of the audit have not been made public.
The uncertain legal status of the land caused the cancellation of another tender in Voronezh. For 36.9 million rubles, a property complex on the street was put up for auction. Chapaev with an area of 1.08 hectares. The winner of the auction eventually purchased the lot for 141.2 million. Part of the site put up for sale had the status of a cultural heritage site, so the owner had to deal with its restoration and conservation. The territory not protected by law could be built up with housing.
However, after the announcement of the results of the auction, it became clear that the protective zone of the cultural heritage site could be expanded – thus, there would be no free space for housing construction on the site.
As a result, the purchase and sale transaction with the then winner of the auction did not take place. Some time later, the lot was put up for auction again. In the tender documentation, the information about the 100-meter protective zone of the cultural heritage site was slightly “tweaked”.
What area of the site would actually be worth restoring and preserving, it seems, now no one will ever know. Interestingly, after the first auction did not take place, information appeared in the media about a certain order of the profile department, which allegedly indicated that the security zone should be 100 meters, and in some places – 200. Therefore, it is possible that housing construction on this land should not have been planned at all.
With this approach, one thing is clear: the promised 100 million square meters of affordable housing from Mr. Mutko (that’s how much real estate should appear on the sold federal lands) is hardly worth waiting for. But especially close developers and officials may well benefit from land sales. It remains only unclear why the corporation needed a noisy advertising campaign for 135 million rubles. Otherwise, potential interested parties will be informed about upcoming auctions at some specially organized private parties. Although, perhaps, advertising money will also go in the right direction?
By the way
The fact that DOM.RF often puts up for auction land with a dubious legal history was also noted in St. Petersburg. Over the past five years, the state corporation has held auctions in the city for 80 lots, but the number of projects implemented as a result can be counted on the fingers. As in the case of the Voronezh auction, it often turns out that the developer simply cannot start construction on the land plot he has received. For example, in 2019, the lot at 22 Bolshevik Ave. was won by the RBI group for 472 million rubles. At the end of last year, the company still did not have a building permit: public hearings were still to be held, at which the construction of a high-rise high-rise was to be approved.
