Penza, 14 March 2015. PenzaNews. “SKM Engineering,” prime contractor for the building of the Sberbank corporate university and subordinate company of “SKM Group” that works in various part of the country including the Penza region, did not pay the workers for the construction, says the letter addressed to German Gref, president and board chairman of Sberbank, from heads of 17 subcontractors who built and commissioned the objects in the Istra area of the Moscow region.

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They are asking the head of Sberbank to help them resolve the situation, in which the aforementioned subcontractors did not receive a total of over 440 million rubles for the done construction and installation work. The total cost of the construction works, based on the data of the technical project contractor “DB Development,” was estimated at 12 billion rubles.

The letter from the subcontractors says the legal bearings of the contracts were managed by LLC “Artstroy,” but actually managed by LLC “SKM Engineering.”

“Since LLC ‘Artstroy’ had no own assets and staff, we understood that its founders are responsible for the actions of their subordinate company, and we have the grounds to approach them with demands to be paid for the work we have done,” the letter says.

As “RBC” reported with a link to “SPARK-Interfax,” 100% of “Artstroy” was owned by LLC “MC ‘SKM Group’” until September 2014, but later Ruslan Ukhanov became its owner. After the corporate university was commissioned in December 2014, Ruslan Ukhanov announced the dissolution of the company (the announcement was printed in the December 31, 2014 issue of “Vestnik Gosudarstvennoi Registratsii”). Based on what the letter from the subcontractors says, the liquidator of the company filed a bankruptcy act against “Artstroy” to the Arbitration Court of Moscow in late January 2015.

Neither Fedor Toschev, general director of “SKM Engineering” and deputy of the Penza region Legislative Assembly with a declared income of 31.5 million rubles based on 2013 data; nor Roman Semenov, head and major owner of “SKM Group” acknowledge the debt to the subcontractors.

“Such events may lead to a wave of bankruptcy among actual subcontractors,” the letter concludes.

In its turn, the press service of Sberbank confirmed that the company received the appeal to German Gref from the subcontractors.

“The bank has no contracts with the subcontractors, and no debts to the prime contractor. We are informed of the situation and ready to provide maximum support in resolving it,” said a Sberbank representative.

Roman Semenov, general director of “SKM Group,” and Sergei Nazarkin, board chairman of the company, are currently unavailable for comment.

The campus of the Sberbank corporate university was built by the village of Anosino in the Istra area of the Moscow region on an area of 37,000 sq. meters. The 23-hectare land plot in the Istra river flood plain now houses academic buildings, conference halls, student and teacher dorms, a club and sports buildings. Its commission was scheduled on August-September 2013, but the complex opened its doors only in early November 2014.