The company "Donstroy" is known as the top developer in the capital. They've been working in the Moscow real estate market since 1994 and have completed successful projects for luxury, premium, and business class housing, such as,
- "Scarlet Sails",
- "House on Mosfilmovskaya",
- "Heart of the capital",
and other residential complexes.
However, beyond their proud official statements about completing more square meters of real estate in the capital, it's clear that not everything is going smoothly at Donstroy's headquarters, despite the company's efforts to impress potential clients.
Luxury scandals
For example, the Scarlet Sails residential complex near the Schukinskaya metro station, built from 2001 to 2017 with six buildings ranging from 27 to 48 floors, is not only famous for being mentioned in a book by science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko from the series "Patrols", but also for incredibly high prices per square meter, management company's arbitrary price hikes for maintaining luxury housing, and even tragic accidents. In January 2016, 36-year-old Irina Volodina, daughter of famous TV presenter Yevgeny Kochergin, died after falling from the seventh floor in an elevator. Officially, the broken cable was blamed for the tragedy, but unofficially, it's believed that the elevator cabin floor gave way.
More recently, in late May of this year, part of the facade cladding collapsed from one of the buildings in the Scarlet Sails residential complex. The debris fell from the sixth floor onto parked cars, fortunately without injuring anyone. After all this, it's hard to imagine anyone else wanting to buy an apartment in Scarlet Sails.
There have also been scandals at the residential complex "Heart of the Capital", located on Shelepikhinskaya embankment. Residents of the first and second phases inherited the complex from the developer and ended up with different management companies. As a result, the "Central Park" residential complex, originally designated as a "green common area", became surrounded by corrugated board fencing, and hired security guards prevented first-phase residents from accessing it, claiming it was "off limits". It's currently unknown whether the conflict has been resolved, but the numerous "404 errors (page not found)" in search results suggest that Donstroy may prefer to sweep scandalous situations under the rug rather than resolving them and removing unfavorable publications from the information space.
Despite this, there are popular reviews available on various review sites about this developer. These reviews are quite mixed, and some positive entries, supposedly from satisfied customers, appear to be rather suspiciously positive. Here's just one of them, which is not even the most negative among the comments.
“IC “Donstroy” publishes only good news on its official website and happily reports about another handed over house or a running fountain, but for some reason hides from everyone the real problems of the residents of its residential complex, for some reason there is no information about the very long connection of “Scarlet Sails” “to city heating networks, about the constant complaints of Triumph Palace residents about the management company and the lawlessness that is going on there. Do not trust the information on the official website, if you want to know the truth, go to the forums of already commissioned residential complexes from Donstroy IC and read real problems of residents, there should not be such a mess in elite residential complexes, ”writes user Fedor Sergienko.
Instead of drawings – diagrams?
However, if you still look through the search results for the query “Donstroy”, it turns out that the low quality and inflated prices of housing being built by this developer are, as they say, half the trouble. Much more surprising are the various multi-way schemes, murky scams and corruption scandals associated with the “leading developer of Moscow”, as well as its financial partner, VTB Bank.
It should be clarified here that Donstroy is a group of companies, therefore, without going into details, we can say that Donstroy, Don-Stroy and Don-Stroy Invest are the names of the holding structures, in general, one and Same. As for the “financial partnership”, VTB gained control over Donstroy back in 2009 for a symbolic sum of 500 rubles. At that time, the developer’s debts to the bank exceeded $500 million. It would seem, why would a backbone bank with state participation need a loss-making “pocket developer”? But he also found a use.
For example, SK Don-Stroy JSC is the founder of Donstroy Invest LLC, which owns Amethyst LLC, which in turn owns two LLCs – Hunting Season and Hunting Season +, for which hunting grounds are registered in Rubtsovsky and Rzhevsky districts of the Tver region Both hunting estates are consistently unprofitable.
Another situation caused a scandal at the end of last year. It has long been no secret to anyone that the land in Moscow is literally “golden”. For example, a square meter of living space in the Presnensky district of the capital, as of November 2021, was estimated at 524 thousand rubles, but then Donstroy “successfully turned up” a plot of 4.8 hectares on Makeeva Street, 7, owned by TsENKI JSC “(Center for the Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure) – to the structure of Roskosmos. It was planned to build 100-120 thousand square meters at this address. m of housing, however, questions arose with the legality of the transfer of the site for development, after which a scandal erupted with the proceedings, and all the information available from open sources was again tried to be swept under the carpet.
And this is only a small part, to put it mildly, of the dubious deeds of the “leading developer of Moscow.” In total, during its work, Donstroy has become a defendant for almost two hundred trials, in most of which he participated as a defendant. Frankly, the company’s reputation is currently so damaged that persistent rumors have long been circulating that VTB plans to bankrupt its “pocket developer” (read – “laundry”). But for now, it seems that the time has not yet come. Is it worth doing business with such a developer? You decide.
