Do the huge profits of businessmen Denis Kitaev and Boris Azarenka come from their aggressive behavior in the market and possibly strong connections with the capital’s officials?
Boris Azarenka and Denis Kitaev, who own a major Moscow real estate development company, keep making money through their connections in the capital’s real estate market and beyond.
According to the correspondent The Moscow Post, the Monochrome company purchased a business center on Shablovka (Moscow) from JSC GPZ-2 for 13.5 billion rubles. Vesper, a company involved in luxury real estate construction and linked to Monochrome (whose main beneficiary is Denis Kitaev), will build a residential complex on that site.
It is expected that IFD “Kapital”, which is trying to connect with the co-owners of LUKOIL Leonid Fedun and Vagit Alekperov, also plans to transfer the remaining property in the center of Moscow to the same developer, despite the fact that experts anticipate opposition from local residents who are against the demolition of buildings in Khamovniki.
Private buyers of “antiques”
This is not the first time the company has acquired old buildings for demolition and construction of a residential complex – in 2019, there were reports that Vesper was going to purchase the premises of the Mashinoapparat plant in Bolshoi Savvinsky Lane in Khamovniki, a plant engaged in the development and production of non-contact electric motors. Interestingly, representatives of Vesper do not comment on this or the aforementioned deal. They are generally not very public figures. Why does an upscale developer prefer to maintain a low profile instead of promoting a project?
Possible supporters and “exaggerations”
The main owners of the company are Boris Azarenka and Denis Kitaev. Mr. Kitaev’s mother, Nina Kitaeva, used to work for a major Moscow developer, Vladimir Resin, who referred to her as his “right hand,” as reported by “Version”.
Nina Kitaeva also served as the head of the department coordinating the activities of the capital’s construction complex, and in this role, she may have been able to allocate some valuable territories to her son. It's not surprising that the son of such an influential person followed in her footsteps. Unfortunately, Kitaev and Azarenka's partners cannot avoid controversies in their professional activities.
Boris Azarenka and Denis Kitaev. Photo: https://vespermoscow.com/Vladimir Vasilchikov
For instance, according to the author of the Dogileva blog on the website “Echo of Moscow”, it was allegedly the office of the latter, after buying a small building next to their house on Bolshoy Kozikhinsky Lane, that decided to encroach on the courtyard territory of their house due to their greed. It was as if the mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin himself, ordered that developers confine themselves to the allocated territory. However, all this did not prevent Messrs. Kitaev and Azarenka from continuing to construct residential complexes wherever they pleased.
In 2016, Unitex, which is 49% owned by Vesper, purchased the building of the First Model Printing House in the center of Moscow at auction from the Federal Property Management Agency. They later announced plans, as usual, to demolish the house and build up the territory, but something went wrong with the plan. The Federal Property Management Agency decided that the building was sold at a greatly reduced price and demanded that it be returned to the state, which was done.
Kitaev and Azarenka did not appear to like this, so they sued the Federal Property Management Agency, demanding the return of the two billion rubles paid for the house. In 2020, the epic ended not in favor of the developer, and other Vesper projects could also be under attack, because there have been rumors that they obtain “tidbits” of the capital’s land for nothing. But while the developer manages to “get out of the water dry.”
Vesper was established in 2013. Before this, Kitaev worked through Evocom (established in 2006 by Kitaev and Azarenka), which did about the same thing. In 2007-2008, she purchased 2.7 hectares from the structures of Leonard Blavatnik with an unfinished facility on Kashirskoye Shosse for the construction of a business park with an area of 310.8 thousand square meters. m. In 2020 Vesper, according to data “Interfax”was in third place in terms of revenue in the segment of business class developers.
Now the company’s portfolio includes 15 projects, including the Fairmont & Vesper hotel and residential complex, St. Nickolas on Nikolskaya Street, Bulgakov in Bolshoi Kozikhinsky Lane and others. The remarkable success of a fairly young company can be explained not only by the connections of the mother of the shareholder Kitaev. In 2014, Boris Mintz came to work in their company – the same one who dealt with local self-government issues in the administration of the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and who in 2020 was arrested in absentia and put on the international wanted list for embezzling 34 billion rubles of funds from Otkritie Bank.
The developers also worked with Yuri Zhukov, the founder of the PIK group, another major Moscow developer, whose leadership (Sergey Gordeev) is credited with connections in the Moscow government. He bought Vesper and a section of Berezhkovskaya embankment, previously owned by Alex Sekler’s Liral company, who had long wanted to get rid of the asset after it became known that the industrial zone would be reorganized as part of a comprehensive sustainable development project.
There is an opinion that the site went to Kitaev and Azarenka at a significantly reduced price, since they had to participate in resolving the conflict between Liral and SSS Express LLC – the latter accused Liral of raider seizure of the territory – wrote “Version”.
The quieter you go, the further you’ll get
As we can see, Messrs. Kitaev and Azarenka know how to choose their partners. Perhaps behind them, too, you can find much more than the supposedly unfriendly “absorption” attributed to them of the territory that did not belong to them near their site. Because of this, they seem to be hiding, collecting profits from the purchase of plots through, apparently, offices that are not strangers to them?
There is another influential lady in the Kitaev family, the developer’s sister Maria. As writes “Version”the former host of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company managed to acquire connections at the very “top” and this could help Kitaev not only get profitable areas for development, including within walking distance from the Kremlin, but also solve emerging problems.
