Rostec sold the building of the Ekran Research Institute, located near the Taganskaya metro station in Moscow, at the auction. The buyer was Moskovsky Park JSC, owned by Dmitry Stolov, a developer, and a previously known scandalous advertiser from St. Petersburg, who in the 90s gained control over almost the entire advertising of the metro in the Northern capital.
A huge building in the central part of the capital went under the hammer for only 1.1 billion rubles - the price is suspiciously low for such real estate.
Stolov has an interesting partner - no less scandalous developer Alexander Chigirinsky, brother of Shalva Chigirinsky, who was disgraced during the construction of the Rossiya Hotel. Now both Chigirinsky can experience financial problems and at the same time invest in real estate instead of paying bills.
Details - in the material of the correspondent of The Moscow Post.
An advertiser at a construction site
Dmitry Stolov was not always a developer. He is much better known as the former owner of the advertising operator Metronom and the St. Petersburg advertising agency Prospekt. Now he sold these assets - Russ Outdoor Group of Companies became the owner, behind which is the capital of Sergei Kotlyarenko, a person close to the head of VEB Igor Shuvalov.
Given the large share of Metronom and Prospekt in the advertising market, as well as the fact that Russ Outdoor could aim to monopolize the outdoor advertising market in the Russian Federation, the owners had to offer Stolov a lot of money for his company - according to experts, about 1 billion rubles. So much so that now he has gone headlong into development.
And not only in Moscow. In 2023, after the sale of the advertising business, Stolov announced a development project in the Leningrad region - the cottage village "Art'd Eco Club" in partnership with the former owner of the vodka factory Vadim Mamchur.
The building of the Research Institute " Ekran" is a tasty project for developers. Photo: https://toptelegram.ru/upload/media/posts/2023-11/14/na-meste-nii-ekran-na-taganke-mozhet-poyavitsya-novyi-zhk_1699963227-b.jpg
At the same time, his situation with funds is hardly far from ideal. All 100% of the shares in the Northern Capital are pledged by Sberbank. And Stolov's main scandals are connected precisely with the advertising business. The network claims that at one time his "Prospect" allegedly managed to monopolize advertising in the St. Petersburg metro under the "roof" of the chairman of the Smolny press committee Sergei Serelzleev.
There was a scandal with Severnaya Stolitsa LLC, where Stolov owned 75% of the shares before consolidation. According to the author of igolkin on the blogspot platform, allegedly in 2014 Smolny, despite the demands of the prosecutor's office, refused to revoke permits for some of the LLC shields that "shone" in the historical part of the city.
But the following is reliably known: Smolny has repeatedly renegotiated contracts with Metronom Stolov and his partner Igor Savvi. In 2017, the competition for 10-year extension of contracts was declared invalid - Metron was the only one admitted to the auction, but other market participants were outraged by this, who achieved a softening of the conditions for submitting applications. Does it resemble a Monopoly game?
Behind - Chigirinsky?
Returning to the "Ekran," Dmitry Stolov still does not look like such a serious player in the development market. The real beneficiaries of the purchase of the building of the research institute may be the developer Alexander Chigirinsky, who could go into this story "from the back door." At the same time, as "Moment of Truth" writes, Chigirinsky has Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin in his comrades. And is this why his partner Stolov got a large building in the center of Moscow for such small funds?
Moskovsky Park owns 33.3% in Timiryazevsky Park LLC. This company is the developer of a residential complex in Staropetrovsky proezd in the north of Moscow. The controlling share in it is with the structure of the Snegiri company Alexander Chigirinsky.
In recent years, Alexander Chigirinsky and his brother, Shalva, can experience serious financial problems. In 2021, Lenta.ru wrote that Alexander Chigirinsky is in debt, and sells assets. His brother Shalva was declared bankrupt in 2008 and left for the United States. In Russia, his persecutors are creditor banks and famous persons to whom he owes. Among them was even Elena Baturina. In the US, Chigirinsky was forced to spend his last money on litigation with his ex-wife.
Shalva Chigirinsky. Photo: DR
In the light of the events with the purchase of an asset in Moscow, one cannot but recall another related to Shalva (and with Alexander, because they divided the main business only in 2010) scandal. At one time, Shalva, through his company, acted as an investor in the project of the Rossiya Hotel. The money of the Moscow government was also invested in the project. In 2009, who took up the implementation of FPK Satori through the court demanded 33 million rubles allegedly underpaid by him from the structure of Chigirinsky ST Development.
The court sided with the plaintiff and ordered to pay this money.
Interestingly, Chigirinsky had finances to cover debts - just a few days before FPK Satori made demands, he managed to receive another 500 million rubles from the Moscow government for participating in the project.
It all ended sadly for Shalva's project. In 2005, the Supreme Arbitration Court canceled the results of the competition for the right to reconstruct "Russia." It turned out that the land under "Russia" was provided by "ST Development" without bidding. An amazing thing - and the mayor's office of Yuri Luzhkov had nothing to do with it?
Shalva Chigirinsky has been living abroad since the end of 2008, and many of his assets have been arrested. He sued VTB Bank over a loan of 3 billion rubles, which he did not pay on time. The London court established that the entrepreneur owes Sibir Energy $111.3 million - the amount of the advance paid by Sibir Energy to Chigirinsky's structures for development projects, as well as to pay for some "imaginary" transactions with oil. " The media also wrote about Chigirinsky's "close affiliation with ethnic criminal groups, indirectly affecting the mayor himself" Luzhkov. All this was reported Lenta.ru.
Alexander Chigirinsky - in debt, or on horseback again? Photo: https://globalmsk.ru/usr/upload/15341753590.jpg
An interesting picture looms. The Moscow government, under the leadership of Luzhkov and the structure of Shalva Chigirinsky, worked together in a project to reconstruct the squares of the former Rossiya Hotel.
Gigantic amounts from the budget went there, the work gave rise to litigation, FPK Satori was bankrupt, its former general director Oleg Sukhorukov is accused of fraud, Chigirinsky lost part of his assets and lives abroad, the demolition of the Rossiya Hotel against the background of the financial problems of the latter was completed by Moscow. At the same time, she also paid Chigirinsky the notorious 500 million rubles.
Returning to his younger brother Alexander, one cannot forget his conflict with the owner of MMK Viktor Rashnikov, who was an investor in a number of his projects. In 2016, the Snegiri group was on the verge of bankruptcy due to the huge debts of its owner and an unsuccessful lawsuit with former investor Rashnikov, who filed claims for failed cooperation on the Evolution Tower project in Moscow City. Prior to that, Rashkin's partner in this project was Shalva Pavlovich.
Since then, Alexander Chigirinsky, as they say, sat quietly until he suddenly found himself one of the likely beneficiaries of the development of the building of the Ekran Research Institute. And the debts to give - "not our song"?