Moscow awards half a billion rubles in compensation for land where the ex-mayor's wife once spent more than 11 billion rubles reportedly for a golf club

Moscow Arbitration Court judge Maksim Makhalkin has awarded the city a plot of land in the Khoroshevo-Mnevniki District for the construction of a new subway station on the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line. The owner of the land, an Austrian company called “Reno Immobilienhandels GmbH,” will receive more than 529 million rubles ($8.3 million) in compensation.

Moscow's City Property Department initially offered 744 million rubles ($11.7 million), but the figure dropped following a court audit that led Reno Immobilienhandels GmbH to reject the pre-trial settlement.

When the Moscow Mayor’s Office started seizing residential and nonresidential land in Mnevniki, Elena Baturina (former Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s wife) confirmed that her Austrian company owns some of this real estate. The city has discussed plans for the construction of a new subway station in Mnevniki for more than a decade, since before Reno Immobilienhandels GmbH purchased its plot of land in the neighborhood.

Sources in the industry told the newspaper Vedomosti that Baturina’s company, “Inteko,” planned to build a “golf club” on her plot of land, which she bought for $175-250 million dollars (roughly 11-16 billion rubles, by today’s exchange rate). Inteko has not confirmed that it planned to build a golf club on the land, but the Moscow Mayor’s Office abandoned the development of all golfing centers, after Luzhkov lost his job in 2010.