Even as the demolition of Rechnik continues, Mayor Yury Luzhkov has set his sights on the neighboring Fantasy Island luxury village, which is home to ministers and generals rather than a planned sports school and a rehab center for the disabled.
In an interview to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, Luzhkov promised to deal with the Fantasy Island community. "Sports facilities were supposed to be built here, not houses for the complicated people who now live in them. … We'll certainly go to court, since the builders of the elite village blatantly violated the terms of the investment contract that they signed with the city and that, by the way, is not yet closed," he told the newspaper.
The work at Fantasy Island will begin once the homes in Rechnik are all demolished, he said. "It will be an entirely different story, although with a similar ending."
Luzhkov's press service confirmed that the mayor was quoted accurately. City Hall is preparing to check the legality of the construction in Fantasy Island, a senior source in the Moscow city government told Vedomosti.
It remains unclear, however, which of the "complicated" residents Luzhkov was referring to. Izvestia reported that the wife of Alexander Bulbov, an arrested general from the Federal Drug Control Service, has a home in Fantasy Island. A source in the city government said Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko and his wife, Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova, currently live there, as do former Senator Umar Dzhabrailov and billionaire Iskander Makhmudov.
"I bought property in this village on the secondary market in 2007. The property is listed in my income declaration, which, by the way, was printed in the press. All of the rights to it were registered correctly and within the time frames established under the law," Khristenko said through a spokesperson. He declared a 218.6 square meter apartment.
Dzhabrailov told Vedomosti that many residents in Fantasy Island had to register their property through the courts and that he spent half a year doing so. "You can't punish people twice — we've already suffered as it is, buying apartments from a builder who didn't handle the construction documentation properly. And the mayor of Moscow needs to deal first with his subordinates who allowed this construction. It's unlikely that an entire village was built without their knowledge," he said.
Makhmudov could not be reached for comment.
Construction of Fantasy Island, located on the banks of the Moscow Canal in the western district of Krylatskoye, began in 2000. According to Moscow city government Order No. 525, the area was supposed to be used for a water-skiing complex.
In that document, investor FSK Tesko, with co-investor Mir Fantazii, was given two plots: 9.63 hectares and 21.9 hectares based around the Viktoria sports school. In March 2003, the city government signed an investment contract with Mir Fantazii to build a rehabilitation center for the disabled and a hotel and clinic complex.
The sports facilities were not handed over to the city, said Vladimir Silkin, the city's property minister. In late 2005, City Hall decided to cancel the investment contract, but by then, the developers had already managed to build Fantasy Island. According to the complex's web site, the village was built with a loan from VTB and includes 24 cottages and 19 four-story buildings.
VTB's press office said Mir Fantazii was given a $50 million, five-year credit line in April 2003 but that the company had repaid the loan by 2005 and is no longer the bank's client.
A spokesperson for Mir Fantazii declined to comment on Luzhkov's threat, saying that all of the property in the village had already been sold. Property there is currently being offered by the real estate agency Russian Realty, with prices averaging $17,000 per square meter.
The agency's employees answer the phone numbers listed for Mir Fantazii.
Builders believe that the company's owner is Sergei Grishchenko, the former board chairman and co-owner of KD Avia. He is currently in pretrial detention on charges of deliberately bankrupting the airline. A Sergei Grishchenko is listed as the main owner of both Mir Fantazii and FSK Tesko in the SPARK database.
Dmitry Vasilyev, a lawyer and member of the Moscow City Bar Association, studied in detail the documents to build the village in 2005 at the request of a potential property buyer. "I gave a negative recommendation, since the documents for the building had legal defects, the main one being that the actual use of the land did not correspond to its intended purpose as stated in the rental agreement," he said.
Vasilyev said it was possible that a court could rule that the construction was unauthorized, although the owners still have a chance ?€” what matters now is who goes to court first.
Homeowners in the village may be able to save their property, agreed Alexei Melnikov, another member of the city bar. According to Article 272 of the Civil Code, real estate cannot be demolished if the building's value is clearly greater than the value of the plot it stands on.