Gouverneur des Gebietes Tscheljabinsk

To discuss the issue of housing provision to hoodwinked participants of housing construction, a meeting attended by Evgeniy Kuyvashev, Authorized Representative of the President in Ural Federal District, Aleksandr Khinshtein, Deputy to State Duma, and Governors of the regions of Ural Federal District and representatives of the General Prosecutor’s Office was held.

Mikhail Yurevich, Governor, declared that in 2011 in the Chelyabinsk region, the funds invested in construction of an apartment house in Ozersk (ul. Karla Marksa 32) have been repaid to claimants. Two «troublemaking» apartment houses in Chelyabinsk (Komsomolskiy prospekt 42b, developer - OOO Construction Company «NEP») and in Miass (Vernadskogo 21, customer - OOO «Promzhilstroy») have been commissioned. Thus, developers' obligation to 114 citizens have been discharged.

The Head of the region emphasized that apartments would be surely provided to most of investors. As of January 01, 2012, there are only 11 «troublemaking» buildings left in the South Ural (in Chelyabinsk, Kopeysk and Zlatoust). The commissioning of five houses of these 11 «troublemaking» buildings will be especially challenging. We should note that our region faced difficulties in commissioning of about 20 buildings after the economic recession in 2009.

In Q1, 2012, three «troublemaking» blocks of flats are to be commissioned: in Chelyabinsk (ul. Tsvillinga 62, developer - Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts; ul. Geroev Tankograda 63a, developer – OOO Enterprise «Zhiltekhstroy») and in Zlatoust (Residential Area «Medik» 4a, developer – Municipal Department of Zlatoust City District «Capital Development Department»). The construction of the above apartment houses has been already completed. At the present time, the developers eliminate defects detected by Gosstroynadzor. Upon commissioning of defect-free houses, the claims of 177 investors will be satisfied.

As far as the Chelyabinsk region concerns, Mikhail Yurevich emphasized that no criminal actions had been actually initiated relating to fraud schemes used by developers. «We observed regular violations of rights of apartment buyers. They can be hardly classified as investors: developers, at their own discretion, provide apartments in houses without obtaining construction and operation permits. And law enforcement authorities do nothing to tackle this problem. I talked about it at the meeting. In general, failure to initiate criminal cases to protect the rights of hoodwinked investors contributes to reoccurrence of this situation. In particular, we believe that the construction fraud in Kopeysk has been caused by gross violations of law. Legal evaluation has not been performed. However, a procurator's team will be formed within a short time to investigate this case», - said Mikhail Yurevich.

We should add that the participants decided to hold a number of meetings in the territories of the Ural Federal District. In April, one meeting will be convened in Chelyabinsk.