Luzhniki gave Moscow the Big Arena

The Luzhniki Olympic complex donated to Moscow the Big Sports Arena (BSA), valued at almost 4 billion rubles. This will allow officials to begin preparing the facility for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which may require 20-30 billion rubles. But the transfer of the BSA is opposed by the minority shareholder of Luzhniki, APS-Center, who insists that the sports complex has lost almost its last liquid asset.

Photo: Grigory Sobchenko, Kommersant / buy photo

The fact that Luzhniki donated the BSA (area - 134,224 thousand square meters) to Moscow was reported yesterday by RIA Novosti, citing its sources in the mayor's office. The board of directors of the sports complex made this decision back in March, as follows from the minutes of the board meeting. A copy of the document was given to Kommersant by the general director of APS-Center CJSC (as of December 2012, he owned 11.9% of OJSC Luzhniki OK) Roman Karmanov. The document indicates that BSA is valued at 3.859 billion rubles, which is 34.62% of the book value of Luzhniki's assets.

In addition, on June 20, the government of the Russian Federation, by special resolution N518, approved the preparation program for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where the Moscow government is listed as responsible for preparing the sports complex for the matches, and not OJSC Luzhniki, the source of funding is the city budget . Kommersant's interlocutors, familiar with the situation, estimated the cost of reconstruction of Luzhniki at 30 billion rubles. In April, Marat Khusnullin, acting vice-mayor, stated that “if FIFA maintains all its strict requirements,” the reconstruction of the BSA will cost 20-25 billion rubles.

It was not possible to find out the official reason for the transfer of BSA to the city’s balance sheet. Yesterday, the press services of the mayor and the city property department (DGI) did not respond to Kommersant's request, and the Luzhniki representative was unavailable for communication. “Having received the BSA on its balance sheet, the city will be able to directly allocate funds from the budget for reconstruction. Now this can be done by providing Luzhniki with budget loans, but it takes a lot of time to organize this procedure and coordinate with all authorities,” says the president of the bar association.” Uzoikin, Piskov and colleagues" Denis Uzoikin. In his opinion, Luzhniki shareholders, on the contrary, get the opportunity to get rid of a burdensome asset: if the arena remained on the balance sheet of the OJSC, its shareholders would have to find funds for reconstruction. In addition to APS-Center, as of the end of 2012, the shareholders of Luzhniki are CTK (29.99%), Usadba-Center (24.99%), OEK-Finance (20.21%) . All three companies are controlled by DGI, which directly owns 12.39% of Luzhniki. Capital officials are convinced that APS-Center is controlled by the ex-general director and former co-owner of Luzhniki Vladimir Aleshin. Roman Karmanov refutes this information, but does not name the final beneficiaries of APS-Center.

Mr. Karmanov says that APS-Center will challenge the decision of the board of directors to transfer BSA to the city’s balance sheet in the courts. “We will insist in court that the board of directors made an unreasonable decision that is detrimental to the OJSC,” says Mr. Karmanov. If APS-Center manages to prove its case in court, then the damage will be compensated by the members of the board of directors who voted for this decision, explains Denis Uzoikin. Among those who supported the transfer of BSA to the city are: O. Deputy Mayor Alexander Gorbenko and Deputy Head of the City Council Vladimir Pogrebenko. According to Roman Karmanov, after the transfer of the BSA, the Luzhniki stadium remains on its balance sheet with the Druzhba stadium, the office of the sports complex itself. A small sports arena for 8.7 thousand spectators and a swimming pool are pledged to Sberbank.

APS-Center has been suing the Moscow authorities since last year. The reason for the litigation was an additional share issue in favor of CTK, as a result of which the share of APS-Center was halved from 24%. Roman Karmanov says that APS-Center is ready to sell its 23.616 thousand shares to the city for approximately 890 million rubles, or 37.79 thousand per share, which is how much the Luzhniki shares were valued by order of the city. In April, the DGM, in a response letter to APS-Center (available to Kommersant), reported that the city budget was not ready to spend funds on buying out Luzhniki shares from a minority shareholder.

Khalil Aminov

Sports Generosity Attraction