Phot. onliner.by
A Russian company decided to finance the completion of long-term construction of a hotel complex near the circus in Minsk. The hotel was supposed to belong to the world-known Kempinski chain.
Russia’s Sberbank Capital has bought 100% stake of the Belarusian company Elite Estate for a nominal price – BYN1.99 (appr. $1), the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reports with reference to its own sources.
Sberbank Capital, a daughter company of Russia’s Sberbank, focuses on investment in construction. Elite Estate is a subsidiary of the Triple group of companies owned by Lukashenka’s former bagman Yury Chyzh.
The hotel was to have been delivered by the 2014 Ice Hockey Championship. To clear the site for construction, Minsk authorities even ordered to demolish the city’s first power plant built in the XIX century. When Triple faced trouble, it was rumoured about the change of ownership, but there were no volunteers to purchase the hotel. Kempinski opted out of taking control over the hotel; after that Minsk residents gave it the nickname ‘ex-Kempinski’.
To commit the deal, Sberbank CEO German Gref visited Minsk and met with Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka on January, 12. They talked about Sberbank’s participation in additional financing complex projects in Belarus.
Sberbank’s interest in the project is not accidental as its Belarusian-based ‘daughter’, BPS-Sberbank, had allocated a loan for the construction of the hotel. When the process got frozen, it passed into the category of troubled loans.
Last year Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed a decree extending the deadline for the construction until the end of 2018. According to estimates, about $100 mln was needed for the completion of the project.
