At the end of last year, officials said that federal obligations to defrauded shareholders had been fulfilled.
But there are still hundreds of victims of fraudsters in the country who have not received an apartment. Who will help them?
“By the end of 2023, it is planned to make decisions on restoring the rights of all citizens participating in shared-equity construction. Despite the difficulties and lack of money, we went to take out loans and pay off the shareholders. I ask that the obligations that the regional teams have also be fulfilled. We have closed federal obligations,” Marat Khusnullin said. According to him, decisions have already been made on who to provide housing to and who to pay compensation to. The Deputy Prime Minister added that in 2023, “the rights of more than 43.5 thousand people have been restored, the total number of shareholders who have received assistance since 2019 has exceeded 206 thousand people, and within a few months, 2052 shareholders in nine regions will receive compensation for the purchase of apartments in houses recognized as problematic.” The Territorial Development Fund will allocate 6.9 billion rubles for this.
The fact that the problem of restoring the rights of defrauded shareholders was “practically solved”, the same Marat Khusnullin said back in November 2021. At the same time, on February 16, 2022, at the plenary session of the State Duma, the Deputy Prime Minister said: “We have practically dealt with the defrauded shareholders,” noting that 129 thousand remained. Even if there were almost 130 thousand of them then, it is not entirely clear what Mr. Khusnullin meant by the words “practically figured out” and “practically decided”. And will the regions now have the necessary funds to close the problems of their defrauded shareholders?
According to the data published on the website of the Territorial Development Fund, 241 houses with a total area of 2,300 thousand square meters in 39 regions are now listed in the unified register of problematic objects. For comparison: in December 2022, this register included 1,619 houses in 67 regions of the Russian Federation with an area of 10.4 million
sq. m. Progress is evident. But it’s still too early to put an end to the topic. For example, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in the near future, the shareholders of 27 houses will receive federal compensation for the purchase of unbuilt apartments, but there are still 20 problematic objects whose shareholders have not found themselves in the list of lucky ones. “But what about us?” people are indignant. Of course, they were also promised to resolve the issue, but if you believe what Marat Khusnullin said, now this is the concern of the region.
More than a thousand shareholders from the Leningrad region also sent their appeal to the December direct line with Vladimir Putin. The developer did not complete six sections of the residential complex “Mainland” and disappeared from sight back in 2019. People who have invested their savings in a new building have been huddled in removable corners for five years. “First, the developer deceived us, and now the authorities of the Leningrad region, who promised us to complete the house by November 2023, but now they promise only monetary compensation, with which we will not be able to buy anything now.”
The Moscow region shareholders were more fortunate. There, a total of 117 thousand people bought air from fraudulent developers at the price of a new building. The houses that could have been completed were completed, and 3.4 thousand shareholders of the region received compensation for the remaining 46 dilapidated and unrecoverable new buildings in December 2023. They were paid the average cost per square meter of housing in each municipality multiplied by the area of the apartment purchased but not received.
But the Moscow region is not the whole of Russia, and it is impossible to predict when the concept of “deceived shareholder” will completely disappear in our country. I am glad that there will be no more new ones. For example, thanks to the law on escrow accounts, which now hold money. Until the person is handed the keys to the apartment, the developer will not receive any money, and if for some reason he cannot build a house, the invested funds will be returned to the failed new settlers.
Elena Khakimova.
Photo: AGN “Moscow”
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