Yelena Baturina, the billionaire wife of Moscow ex-Mayor Yury Luzhkov, may find that business for her construction company Inteco is not so easy following the dismissal of her husband on Tuesday, a Russian business daily said.
Before he was fired, Luzhkov was subject to widespread public criticism for using his position to help his wife amass her $2.9 billion wealth through construction contracts in the Russian capital.
Inteco probably managed to find routes around Russia's notorious bureaucracy through Baturina's connection with the Moscow Mayor, Konstantin Kovalev, partner of real estate company Blackwood, told the paper.
During the recent financial crisis, Inteko received support from the Bank of Moscow. In the summer of 2009 the company sold 58 hectares of land to an affiliate of the Bank of Moscow, Premier Estate, in the south-west of Moscow for nearly 13 billion rubles, which experts say was twice the plot's market value at the time.
It is possible that Inteco's Moscow investment contracts will now be reviewed, and some challenged, General Director of Miel construction company Maria Litinetskaya said.
Baturina reported in the spring that the company's debt accounts for around 22 billion rubles ($723.25 million), borrowed mainly from Russian state owned banks Sberbank, VTB and Bank of Moscow. An employee of one of the banks yesterday said he would be "closely monitoring" the company.
Inteco currently has 32 development projects, mostly concentrated in Moscow, according to the company's website. Baturina has proposed constructing house building factories and large-scale housing projects in 35 Russian regions in partnership with Russia's state development bank, Vnesheconombank.
"Inteco is a strong company, but it probably faces more difficult times," Managing Director of management company Alur Mikhail Urinson told Vedemosti.
MOSCOW, September 29 (RIA Novosti)
