Why Donstroy is stagnating. The developer is torn apart by family dramas and criminal scandals
On construction sites in Russia – again victims. Again in “Donstroy”, which is still one of the three largest developers and does not skimp on advertising. There is still no official data on who is the ultimate beneficiary of the construction holding. In connection with it, several legal entities are named, but their owners do not advertise themselves, and this information is carefully concealed in Donstroy itself. Meanwhile, passions boil in and around the company that would seem like an implausible fiction if they formed the basis of a scenario from the life of the rich, who sometimes also cry.
As colleagues of the Kompromat-Ural editors remind, the Donstroy company sells very expensive apartments and positions itself as the largest and most reliable developer. The development company was founded in 1994 by Maxim Blazhko and Dmitry Zelenov. The company grew rapidly, engaged in projects in the field of residential and commercial real estate. The most famous of its buildings are the high-rise residential complexes “Scarlet Sails”, “Triumph Palace”, “House on Mosfilmovskaya”, Schuka shopping center, business center NordStar Tower.
Dmitry Zelenov became one of the youngest billionaires in Russia and Europe. In 2008, at the age of 36, he rose to the Forbes billionaire list. Construction was carried out on borrowed funds, they were mainly financed by VEB and VTB. Dubious schemes for issuing loans led to a chain of criminal cases that managed to be put on the brakes. The price of this compromise was the transfer of controlling stakes in Doninvest’s subsidiaries to banks – VTB and Sberbank.
Then the troubles literally rained down. In one of the buildings erected by Donstroy, a woman crashed in an elevator shaft, collapsing with the cabin from the eighth floor. Then, due to a cable break, the elevator with a young mother fell in Rostov-on-Don, in a 22-story building built by the same company. Neighbors got the victim through the roof of the elevator. And last summer, a cladding collapsed from a new, highly publicized residential complex on Aviatsionnaya Street in Moscow, falling on cars, motorcycles and sidewalks parked nearby. Residents and passers-by, fortunately, were not injured …
It seems that Donstroy actually belongs to state-owned banks, which do not advertise their participation in the affairs of the developer, and he continues to regularly publish releases about his successes, listing the names of projects and housing complexes, in which he starts selling thousands of square meters literally tomorrow. Arranges Maslenitsa festivities and other noisy holidays for potential buyers and tenants. But the facts call not only to festive tables: not only plots favorable to builders get into the press. At the end of 2022, Donstroy’s sales in Moscow alone decreased by 40.7% (yoy, to 87.6 billion rubles). The company says that “the current situation in the real estate market related to the CBO and its consequences” has hit the segment of business-class housing in which it operates the hardest.
In any case, the purchasing power of Russians is declining, and developers are in for hard times. Since the beginning of 2023, the demand for the purchase of apartments under construction and finished in the country has fallen by about a third.
Banal scenario
Despite the efforts of the press service, information is still leaking to the press that not everything is beautiful and fun in Donstroy. The other day it became known about another drama – the collapse of two floors of scaffolding on an area of 300 square meters. One person died and two others were taken to the hospital.
The tragedy occurred in the residential complex “Event-4” under construction. A business-class multifunctional complex is being built by the Donstroy company on the street. Lobachevsky, near Ramenka.
And in December 2022, if not the entire scenario for the future fate of the largest developer, then at least its reputation broke down. Although Dmitry Zelenov lost both formal and actual control back in 2009, no one can say for sure how much the block of shares managed by VTB can really cost now.
At the end of 2022, something happened on the French Riviera. There, one after another, several Russian millionaires died untimely. Dmitry Zelenin became ill on December 9 during a dinner party. He fell from the railing of the stairs and mysteriously died the next day in a hospital in Nice – from head injuries incompatible with life. French police, while not pressing any charges or suspicions of criminal murder, continue to investigate Zelenov’s unusual and untimely death. He died at the age of 50, leaving no will or other division of property. The heirs are Zelenov’s wife Natalya Dvoryaninova and four children (the family learned about one minor only after his death of the testator). A couple of months later, the widow and adult son of the deceased, Mikhail Zelenov, filed a lawsuit in a Florida court against the parents of Dmitry Zelenov, his adult daughter and financial consultant. The applicants suspect them of attempting to deprive them of their legitimate inheritance.
The complaint alleges that the defendants changed the locks on the home of Zelenov and his wife in Moscow and took more than two dozen of his cars, including four Mercedes, two Bentleys and a Rolls-Royce. The estate also includes rental income from a luxurious ski chalet in Courchevel, France, a sprawling seven-bedroom estate (worth at least $5 million) set on 2.4 acres of land in the prestigious enclave of Alpine, New Jersey, USA.
There are assets in the form of trusts, limited liability companies, corporations and other structures, ultimately owned around the world by Zelenov himself.
The course of the scandalous trial of the heirs will become a topic of concern to the media for a long time, the Vedomosti edition summarizes. But no less interesting is the fate of the construction holding itself, which also clearly passed its highest point.