Perfectly normal business (sic) If Mommy’s little boy is in crisis, Mom comes to the rescue.
Mommy’s little boy was building a multifunctional commercial real estate complex in Kronstadt, covering 43.5 hectares (about 0.44 sq km) and valued at around €700 million. Right now, commercial real estate projects are doing poorly. So the state budget comes to the rescue. The public-private partnership scheme will allow Governor Valentina Matviyenko to secure naval capital status for the city. And for the governor’s son, Sergei Matviyenko, who heads VTB Development, it will mean saving the commercial project under way in Kronstadt from the crisis by turning it into a state project. According to Sergei Zhdanov, Mr. Matviyenko’s deputy, the project will be “restructured to meet the requirements of the Defense Ministry,” which will act as the construction client. For its part, the St. Petersburg government has pledged to consider granting the project “strategic” status—a designation that gives St. Petersburg’s partners substantial tax and other benefits. In essence, the Defense Ministry has undertaken to finance work on the project at least through 2009. VTB Development, which would then have a chance to return to the project once conditions in the real estate market improve, is unlikely to lose much from the expected presence of the Russian Navy on the island. In any case, the alternative appeared to be freezing the project indefinitely. Here. All one can do is admire the shamelessness, bluntness, and sheer brazenness of Mom and her little boy.