For the construction of a judicial quarter in St. Petersburg

The Russian authorities have completed negotiations with VTB on the confiscation of a land plot for the future judicial quarter in St. Petersburg, previously provided to the investor for the construction of luxury housing. The State Duma urgently introduced an article into the federal budget on the compensation of Petersburg City LLC (a subsidiary of VTB) for 10 of the 11.9 billion rubles spent on the execution of the investment contract. No other decisions have been made yet on financing the new Kremlin construction site for the relocation of the Supreme Court (SC), worth more than 61.9 billion rubles.

Photo: Architectural workshop of M. Atayants

Subsidy for Petersburg City in the amount of 10 billion rubles. Deputies approved it on Friday in three readings without public discussion, voting for a table of amendments recommended for adoption. The amendment, as it turned out, was introduced by the government, transferring to the Federal Property Management Agency the amount allocated to the Ministry of Finance for “implementing the functions of other federal government bodies.” The amendment states that the funds are intended for Petersburg City in connection with the termination of the investment contract by agreement of the parties.

Under the terms of this federal contract, concluded with the investor in 2006, the VTB subsidiary undertook to relocate the strategic FSUE Applied Chemistry, which was involved in the development of space fuel, from the center of St. Petersburg to the Leningrad Region. In addition, she had to purchase an administrative building for him in the city, buy apartments for FSB employees and build a Dance Palace, promised to the artistic director of the St. Petersburg State Academic Ballet Theater Boris Eifman by Vladimir Putin. For this, VTB was allowed to build an elite residential quarter, “Embankment of Europe,” on the site of a former industrial zone, overlooking the Neva and the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island. By the fall of 2012, when the president decided to move the Supreme Court there, the investor had fulfilled almost all of his obligations and demolished all the buildings on the site. Before the construction of VTB began, all that remained was to replace the harmful soil with environmentally friendly one.

According to Kommersant's sources, the draft government decree on terminating the contract with VTB on terms agreed upon with it was discussed on Thursday at a meeting with the participation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The decision has not been officially announced, but according to deputies, this did not prevent them from approving the planned scheme in the budget. A more serious obstacle was the ban on such “compensation for losses upon termination of the contract by agreement of the parties,” established for anti-corruption purposes in 2011 by the law “On investment activities in the Russian Federation carried out in the form of capital investments.” However, in September, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov ordered the provision of exceptions in the event that the government decides to change the intended use of the site in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The corresponding norm was changed without publicity - by the same amendment to the second reading to the bill introduced for other purposes.

According to an audit conducted by the Accounts Chamber, VTB spent 11.945 billion rubles on this facility, of which at least $30 million was uselessly “buried,” paid, in particular, for documentation and other preparatory work for the canceled project. However, the bulk of the amount, according to sources close to VTB, was spent on the tasks set by the Russian Federation. However, during the relocation of the Applied Chemistry Research Center, due to the actions of its previous management, it found itself on the verge of bankruptcy. Vladimir Putin’s classmate Elena Kozlova was appointed as the new head of the institute, and Petersburg City will have to spend several hundred million more rubles to complete the modernization of the research institute, which they later promise to compensate him.

There have been no official decisions on the start of construction of the future judicial quarter, with the exception of an amendment to the Constitution on the location of the Armed Forces. The head of the construction directorate of the presidential administration in the North-Western district, Nikolai Taskin, was entrusted with managing the construction. When asked by Kommersant about choosing a place to build housing for judges and officials of the Supreme Court, he said that the state does not own land near the judicial quarter, and the option of purchasing the land from private developers is being discussed. The location for the cottage of the Chairman of the Supreme Court has not been determined.

Anna Pushkarskaya, St. Petersburg; Viktor Khamraev, Denis Skorobogatko

VTB had to share the land