The Department of City Property (DGI) of Moscow is seeking the demolition of a building in the complex of structures on Vorontsovskaya Street in Moscow that make up the headquarters of MTS. This was told to Vedomosti by a representative of the department. In December, city officials filed a corresponding lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court, according to the file of arbitration cases.
The lawsuit of the DGI and the Moscow government against MTS went to court on December 13, 2022, a preliminary meeting on it is scheduled for early February 2023, indicated in the filing cabinet. As third parties, the committee of state construction supervision of Moscow, the metropolitan department of Rosreestr and the city inspectorate for monitoring the use of real estate are involved.
Officials had claims against MTS after surveying a plot of land in Moscow at the address: st. Vorontsovskaya, ow. 5, p. 1, a representative of the DGI told Vedomosti. The authorities believe that the building stands there illegally. The site is the property of the city authorities, but is now leased, the source added. The site was not provided for construction, and the building has signs of unauthorized construction, says a representative of the DGI. The department, according to him, filed a lawsuit against Mobile TeleSystems PJSC “on recognizing the object as an unauthorized construction and its demolition.”
The representative of MTS does not agree with the illegality of the construction. Although he calls the two-story building, converted from a 19th-century residential building, a “shed” in his commentary, one of the largest television operators is ready to fight for him in court: “The company has supporting documents for the shed and is ready to defend in court the legality of its reconstruction and use” .
The site survey was carried out by the City Inspectorate for Real Estate. “Earlier, a one-story building was located on this territory, which was dismantled and a new object was erected in its place – a two-story building,” an inspection representative told Vedomosti. He insists that the object was built with violations: the authorities did not issue permits for the construction of a new building.
From the data of Rosreestr it follows that the building has an area of only 874 square meters. m and in its current form was put into operation in 1998. According to the Yandex.Maps service, now the building at this address is a two-story office building. Since 1999, this building has been owned by MTS, according to SPARK-Interfax data.
Why DGI filed a lawsuit to recognize this object as an unauthorized construction only now is unknown.
According to SPARK-Interfax, MTS owns 13,456 sq. m. Two consultants who worked with the company claim that it has occupied an office here for at least 10 years.
Now MTS has about 20 offices in different parts of Moscow. The total area exceeds 100,000 square meters. m, knows the head of the department for working with office space IBC Real Estate Ekaterina Belova. The headquarters is still located on Vorontsovskaya street.
The Moscow State Property Inspectorate has special powers to check the proper use of objects owned by the city and leased out, and, based on the results of the checks, submits to the DGI acts on the identification of violations of the intended use of objects committed by tenants, explains Alexander Kadetov, partner at the Yurlov and Partners Law Office. According to him, for the construction of buildings on such sites, tenants must obtain special permission from the city authorities.
How MTS moved
In 2013, MTS planned to transfer all its divisions to Nagatino i-Land in the south of Moscow, sources told Vedomosti, this was confirmed to Kommersant in 2014 by the then president of the operator Andrei Dubovskov. It was about buying about 100,000 sq. m of office space for about 10 billion rubles. The new office was supposed to accommodate employees of MTS and its subsidiaries – MGTS, MTS Bank, Sitronics, NVision. The deal did not take place: “it was more priority for the operator to send money for dividend payments, as well as for the construction of the network,” Kommersant wrote in 2015. In 2018 alone, MTS Bank bought out about 28,000 sq. m. from Nagatino i-Land. m.
Audits are conducted quarterly for compliance with building, redevelopment or ownership regulations, adds director of sales and acquisitions at consulting firm Ricci | Offices” Dmitry Antonov. “When it comes to new construction, there are practically no discrepancies,” he said.
There are quite a lot of proceedings on the recognition of objects as unauthorized buildings in Moscow and the Moscow region, Kadetov states. If the owners of buildings fail to prove the legality of the construction or obtain a construction permit, proving that such objects are harmless to the life and health of citizens, then the buildings are subject to demolition at the expense of the owners, the lawyer added. But even if the court recognizes the MTS building as a self-construction, “there is nothing critical in this: most often, the owners of self-builds are given time to correct the inconsistencies” and legalize the building, Antonov noted.
The cadastral value of the disputed building on Vorontsovskaya is 172.6 million rubles, says Antonov. He assumes that losses from the demolition of the building may exceed this figure by 1.5 times. Thus, MTS may lose at least 258 million rubles.
“For the past five years, we have been hearing about precedents when the Moscow authorities insisted on the demolition of old buildings. First of all, it was about reconstructed lofts. But in all these cases, there was always an alternative solution to demolition,” said Ekaterina Chichek, Director of Key Accounts for Corporate Client Services at CORE.XP consultant. It is unlikely that the MTS headquarters building will be demolished, Antonov agrees. “This is a kind of signal to the owner to resolve current problems that could have arisen already at the stage of purchasing a land plot or approving a construction project,” he concluded.
