How I seized an apartment

Photo: ITAR-TASS

Even when purchasing an apartment in an elite building directly from the developer, the buyer can become hostage to the difficult relations between players in the construction market. Almost four years ago, Muscovite Alexander Vartsaba purchased an apartment in the Golden Keys-2 complex. After the company's builders changed, he had to think not about how to move into his apartment, but how to seize it. He told Dengi magazine correspondent Rinat Gizatulin about this story.

My story began in August 2000, when I decided to buy an apartment in the Golden Keys-2 residential complex. I compared prices, looked at the dynamics of growth in the value of real estate in the Golden Keys-1 complex, saw the quality of the first building and decided to invest in the project.
First of all, I decided to find out with whom I would have to enter into an agreement on shared participation in the construction of the house. It turned out that four companies took part in the construction of the second stage of the Golden Keys complex. The first, CJSC Obnovlenie, was the tenant of a land plot on Minskaya Street, which was allocated for construction. ZAO Obnovlenie plus acted as the customer of the project, and ZAO Rosglavmaterialy as the investor. To carry out the work, the Obnovlenie Plus company entered into an agreement with the general contractor - the St. Petersburg company Stroycontinent XXI Century (according to my information, it actually belonged to the investor - that is, Rosglavmaterials), which actually carried out production activities on Minskaya Street. Compliance with all legal formalities that accompany the signing of an agreement on shared construction was guaranteed by the real estate company Inkom.
After consulting with the sellers, I became an investor-shareholder with the right to obtain ownership of a three-room apartment on the sixth floor of Golden Keys-2 with a total area of 130 square meters. m, of which residential - 82 sq. m. The signed agreement stipulated that I had to pay $117 thousand for the apartment. My first payment amounted to almost $24 thousand - I deposited 650 thousand rubles into the account of the Stroycontinent XXI company. According to the terms of the contract, I had to contribute the rest of the funds during construction, and I had to finally pay after the state commission accepted the house.
It would seem that's it. The money has been paid, the builders are working, the number of storeys in the building is increasing. However, at the end of 2000, publications appeared in the press that mentioned the name of St. Petersburg entrepreneur Evgeniy Dondurey and the companies he headed - Rosglavmaterials and Stroycontinent XXI. The same ones that built the Golden Keys complex. The articles claimed that Mr. Dondurei ruined someone, quarreled with someone, fell into bankruptcy proceedings and eventually left for permanent residence in the UK. As a result, the Obnovlenie and Obnovlenie Plus companies refused the services of a general contractor and in January 2001 terminated the investment contract with Stroycontinent XXI. And instead of one St. Petersburg company, another northwestern corporation, Stroymontazh, began to build the Golden Keys. I can't say that this news upset me. Even to me, a person not privy to the intricacies of the construction market, the name “Stroymontazh” was familiar. I knew that she was actively working in St. Petersburg, and entered the Moscow market with her Korona residential complex.
At the beginning of February 2001, when the time came to make the next payment for the apartment, I came to the Stroymontazh office, but they did not accept my money - without explanation. True, one of the employees promised that soon “I will receive an explanatory letter” from which I will learn everything. And indeed, two weeks later, in a registered letter, I read that the Stroymontazh corporation had become the full owner of the Golden Keys complex, and “in connection with this, it considers all contracts that were concluded by the previous developers of the residential building to be invalid.”
As it turned out later, construction companies actively use the practice of transferring rights to construction or land to their own subsidiaries, while terminating contracts with shareholders (concluded at low prices - after all, the risk of investing at a stage when the house does not yet have a foundation pit is much higher, than when the object is handed over to the state commission).
But I learned all this a little later. And then, in the spring of 2001, after receiving the notification, I tried to solve the problem on my own, and my first step was a meeting with the president of the Stroymontazh corporation, Sergei Polonsky, which was arranged for me by friends working in the construction sector of Moscow. During the five-minute audience, I tried to explain to Mr. Polonsky that his company, having entered into the implementation of the Golden Keys-2 project, according to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, undertook to follow joint responsibility to private investors-shareholders for the results of construction and guarantees for our purchase of apartments in the building, the construction of which we financed. Mr. Polonsky invited me to “go my own way” and stated that Stroymontazh was not responsible for the mistakes of its predecessors.
However, immediately after the conversation with the person who bears the title “Best Entrepreneur of the Decade,” I received a call from a stranger who did not want to introduce himself, but offered to assist in returning the shareholder’s rights to “Golden Keys-2.” Naturally, I had to pay a certain amount due to the “increase in housing prices.” In fact, I was offered to pay several hundred dollars more for each square meter of the apartment.
According to my information, most people who found themselves in a similar situation silently forked out their money and followed the lead of the builders. I decided to defend my rights in court and not allow Stroymontazh to take my apartment away.
My two lawyers, Vitaly Chaban and Kirill Yashenkov, having taken up the case, first of all investigated the structure of the owners of Golden Keys-2 in order to find exactly those defendants who could be subject to demands for mandatory fulfillment of contractual obligations. It is interesting that the search for the “ends” of “Golden Keys-2” continues to this day. Land owners, investors, builders, clients change with such regularity that I got the impression that people were simply hiding behind shell companies to cover their tracks. Judge for yourself.
While I was suing the companies of Sergei Polonsky for two years, CJSC Obnovlenie managed to transfer the rights to the land to the company Lenstroymontazh, headed by Mr. Polonsky (the agreement itself was drawn up in such a way that Lenstroymontazh did not bear any responsibility for the transactions , which previously concluded "Update"). In turn, under the same conditions, the Obnovlenie Plus company transferred the rights of the developer directly to Stroymontazh. As a result, both Lenstroymontazh and Stroymontazh transferred all rights - customer, contractor and investor - to the CJSC Construction Company Stroymontazh, registered in Ingushetia.
Having finally become entangled in this endless game of assignment of rights of claim, the purpose of which is to delay the process and have time to resell the apartments that belonged to the previous shareholders, we decided to get ahead of the builders and filed an application with the district court demanding that my property be seized and prohibit all interested parties from making transactions with it property. "Stroymontazh" offered me to return 650 thousand rubles - the first payment for the apartment. I refused.
The most important thing in these litigations is to try to obtain a court order to take measures to secure the claim. I had to prove to the court that failure to take measures, that is, refusal to seize, would lead to the fact that the apartment could be resold to another shareholder, who, in turn, would become a bona fide purchaser (which would lead to the disappearance of the object of my claim). Consequently, if, as a result of all the proceedings, the court takes my side and obliges all sorts of “Stroymontazhi”, “Updates” and “Incoms” to restore me as a shareholder, then it will be completely impossible to comply with the court decision. In fact, without these measures it is impossible to sue builders.
The court sided with me and forbade everyone, including the Moscow Registration Committee, from accepting documents to register any rights to my apartment, which during the litigation even received a serial number - #15 and was already completed and ready to move in. Stroymontazh, of course, tried to lift the arrest in the Moscow City Court, but was defeated.
The second important legal nuance that I learned as an immutable truth: when signing an investment contract, the shareholder needs to ensure that the companies’ obligations are carefully established in the contract. The main thing is this: the shared construction agreement must contain a clause according to which, if there is a change of owners, investors or developers, all of these parties would be responsible to the shareholder for issuing the apartment to him. All this will be required in court if one of the parties tries to avoid its responsibility.
For me, everything is going well so far. I achieved the main thing: the property will not be resold to another person and I will not be left without an apartment and money. By the way, the money I spend on paying lawyers cannot be compared with the price for which I could sell an apartment in Golden Keys-2 today. According to realtors, my real estate is valued at at least $270 thousand, and its value continues to rise. So there is something to fight for during the next court hearings, at which I will seek recognition of my rights as a construction shareholder.

A WORD FOR PROTECTION
"Stroymontazh" works in the legal field
At the request of Dengi magazine, Vladimir Andreev, director of marketing, advertising and public relations at Stroymontazh JSC, commented on the situation:
— In any dispute there are no absolutely right and absolutely wrong sides. Mr. Vartsaba defends his interests, and the Stroymontazh corporation defends its position. It is great that we resolve conflict issues in court. This proves that Stroymontazh works in the legal field and hopes for a court decision, which will determine who is right and who is wrong in the current situation. We do not want to interfere in the legal dispute from the pages of the media and hope that after the end of the proceedings both sides of the conflict will be satisfied.

Magazine "Kommersant Money" No. 13 dated 04/05/2004, p. 56