According to some media outlets, citing experts from the Unified Resource of Developers database of developers in Russia, the Moscow development holding Donstroy, as of March 1, ranked sixth in the Russian Federation in terms of housing under construction, and in Moscow the holding won second place in this indicator.
In support of this fact, Donstroy is actively advertising its facilities and has stepped up sales of both finished square meters and those planned for delivery in the coming years.
However, the ceremonial picture is sharply dissonant with reality. And it is almost guaranteed to play a cruel joke on inexperienced buyers who decide to save their money from potential devaluation by investing in Donstroy real estate. Moreover, not only the money invested in investment construction is exposed to such a threat, but also in finished objects. What seems like nonsense, but in the case of Donstroy it is quite real.
The fact is that Donstroy has several problems. Each separately, in principle, does not threaten the developer with collapse. But in the complex they already look menacing. Or rather, they looked menacing a month ago, but with the level of support and owners that Donstroy has, they were solved. However, in recent days the situation has changed radically, and not for the better. I think you can guess the reason for the change. Why all this affected Donstroy not in the best way – you will understand after reading the material.
Despite the high rates of houses under construction – the developer is building 1.1 million square meters in the capital – Donstroy had a lot of problems at the end of last year. Here it is worth making a remark – “Donstroy” is not one legal entity. Over the years of its existence, it has turned into a holding company, which includes dozens of companies, one way or another connected with each other. There are a variety of relationships between these companies – up to lawsuits – but it should be understood that they all share a common denominator, namely the owners.
Beneficiaries of Donstroy
And with the owners, the story turns out to be very curious. Because, despite the various registers in which Donstroy’s structures are registered, data on its ultimate beneficiaries are closed. According to Alena Deryabina, CEO of the holding, Donstroy is owned by five legal entities. However, for many years she has refused not only to name the owners of these legal entities, but even the names of the companies themselves that own Donstroy. And in state registries, this data is carefully hidden.
However, according to information leaked to the public, it became known that a number of government officials of the highest level are behind Donstroy. All of them are hiding under the guise of a closed-end mutual investment fund Moscow Real Estate. Although the fund is closed, however, there are some logical chains between certain persons from the highest authorities and firms that are part of the Donstroy holding.
The most obvious is Alena Deryabina, who became the general director of Donstroy in 2010, when VTB bought it for debts. Deryabina worked in a bank as a vice president.
And the decision to buy a debt to the bank – Donstroy owed VTB $ 500 million – was made by the head of the bank’s board, Andrey Kostin. We bought this debt for a symbolic 500 rubles. And right there in the “Donstroy” the head was replaced, Deryabina became it. And the owners have changed. However, contrary to logic, they did not include VTB Bank. But who exactly began to own Donstroy was hidden behind an investment fund. Recall that VTB is a state structure, and its president Kostin is an official appointed by the state to manage the bank.
However, the story does not end with Kostin. Among the beneficiaries of Donstroy, the name of the former Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and his wife Olga is mentioned – a connection is traced between the intermediate owners of the structures of the Donstroy holding and firms affiliated with the Shuvalovs.
A trace of the famous Rotenberg brothers is also being found – through a certain Roman Gromozdov, who has joint projects with the Rotenbergs. On the other hand, there is a connection between Gromozdov and Kostin’s deputy for VTB Andrei Puchkov. It was the latter, according to persistent rumors, who entrusted Gromozdov with control over the Donstroy structures involved in the sale of housing.
The press also wrote that the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, was involved in the ownership of Donstroy – the oil monopolist is connected with the developer through the KL Development company, whose founder until last December was SK Donstroy JSC. To date, its official owner is Special Construction Company Otdelfinstroy and Partners LLC, owned by two legal entities – LLC SZ Otdelfinstroy and JSC SZ KSK Group. In turn, the holder of the register of shareholders of JSC SZ KSK Group is the company Reestr-RN, which is part of the structure of the oil giant.
It is possible that German Gref, the head of Sberbank, is also involved in Donstroy. The fact is that Donstroy had a debt not only to VTB, the holding had an overdue loan of several million dollars to Sberbank. Moreover, they repaid it in approximately the same way as before VTB – by selling to the bank for a symbolic amount of several hundred rubles one of the holding’s structures – DS Development LLC.
As for the rest of the beneficiaries, opinions differ here. Some experts name among them the head of Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, and several other influential top officials, but most likely this is simply because these persons appeared in scandals related to Donstroy.
Scandals and state corporations
There were many scandals in the life of Donstroy. We recall only the loudest. Let’s start with the land owned by the Roskosmos structure and located in the center of Moscow, on the street. Sergey Makeev, 7, at the place of the former registration of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Design Bureau Motor. Today it is already a liquidated structure, which was previously part of the structure of Roskosmos and was controlled by the Center for the Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure Objects (TsENKI).
But in 2019, it suddenly turned out that Specialized Developer Makeeva LLC, founded by Don-Stroy Invest, was registered at 7 Sergey Makeev Street. And FSUE Motor, registered at the same address, was liquidated.
After the scandal raised in the press, the project was “frozen”, re-registering SZ Makeeva LLC at a different address – Mosfilmovskaya Street, house 70, underground floor, room 106. The company tried to erase all mention of the previous address and the announcement of sales of apartments in the planned residential complex at the address Sergey Makeev Street, 7. But the so-called “mirrors” of the sites and the order for the assessment of a 4.8-hectare site at this address remained.
We add that, most likely, this is where the rumors about Rogozin’s involvement in the ownership of Donstroy come from.
Another scandal is related to banal bribery and fraud when connecting power grids. As the VChK-OGPU telegram channel found out, an organized group of former security officials led by Andrey Khorev, ex-deputy head of the DEB of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, regularly receives huge sums from Donstroy for resolving issues when connecting construction projects to heat. We are talking about tens and hundreds of millions of rubles.
Dismissed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation due to corruption scandals, the former security officials settled profitably in the field of heat supply in Moscow, taking key positions in heat supply organizations under the patronage of the Rotenbergs. This group creates artificial obstacles for developers when connecting to heating systems. And for a certain bribe, “solves the issue.”
In Donstroy, the group has a connection with one of the directors, Andrei Bagaev, a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who has direct access to the holding’s general director, Deryabina. It is Bagaev who convinces Deryabina to pay Khorev “for solving” problems. By the way, Khorev’s name came up in connection with the case of another famous “Debian” – Colonel Zakharchenko, in whose apartment billions of rubles were found during a search.
Speaking of scandals, it is worth mentioning the “House on Mosfilmovskaya”, where, according to the results of the check, nine extra floors were revealed. It’s a long time ago – it happened back in 2009. But an interesting nuance is that at first the Urban Planning and Land Commission under the Government of Moscow issued an order to demolish the superstructured floors, but soon reversed its decision. The cancellation coincided with the change of owners of Donstroy – just then VTB and Sberbank bought out the holding’s debts to themselves and changed beneficiaries.
Another scandal is connected with the death of a person – in 2016, an elevator broke in the Scarlet Sails residential complex, a resident of this house died. And in December 2019, as a result of a fire in the utility room, two people died there.
Debts and potential bankruptcy
But most of the above is history. But the current affairs of Donstroy are not encouraging. The matter is that the majority of the companies entering into holding, have huge losses. So, for example, at the end of 2020, the profit of IC Donstroy JSC amounted to 117,000 rubles with a revenue of 15.2 billion rubles. Another holding company, Don-Stroy Invest JSC, showed revenue of 22.3 billion rubles in 2020. But at the same time, the losses amounted to 6.2 billion rubles.
In addition, the holding’s structures are mired in litigation – as of the end of last year, the total amount of lawsuits brought against the developer is estimated at 160 million rubles. Among the plaintiffs, LLC “MSK Group” is named – the management company in the houses built by “Don-Stroy Invest”. Moreover, according to media reports, the courts satisfy her statements literally one after another. One of the largest lawsuits came in 2017, when the Russian Capital Bank secured about 500 million rubles from the developer.
However, against the background of all this, the behavior of VTB looks strange, which has remained one of the largest creditors of Donstroy all these years. It seems that money is simply withdrawn from the state bank through the credit line. The intermediary is the structures of Donstroy, which take virtually unsecured loans from VTB. The money is then not returned, and the collateral, which, according to the bank, should cover the loan amount with its value, turns out to be a fiction and exists only on paper.
Perhaps this is also related to court decisions that are literally stamped on one of the holding’s structures – the above-mentioned Don-Stroy Invest. Recall that, judging by the tax reporting, this is a completely loss-making enterprise. Despite the fact that it has gigantic sales volumes – we cited the figures above.
In this regard, the role of the head of VTB Andrei Kostin in all this credit history cannot but be of interest. And the obvious conclusion cannot but follow – the money of the state bank is simply withdrawn through loans from the Donstroy holding controlled by the head of VTB and float away in an unknown direction.
And in the end, those who dare to invest their rubles in Donstroy projects will suffer in the end – because sooner or later VTB will try to return the loans. And he will seize the assets of Donstroy. Since there will be no money in the holding’s accounts, all assets will go under the hammer in order to somehow compensate for the bank’s losses. And people who have invested their money in “elite” Moscow real estate will be left with worthless investment contracts.
That’s just another interesting question – and who covers Kostin from the interest of people who should stand guard over public money? He’s not doing all this alone, is he? And he is not the only beneficiary of Donstroy, as you understand.