SOCHI, September 7 (Itar-Tass) — The organisers of the Sochi Olympics will painlessly part with unscrupulous investors that fail to meet their obligations on the construction of Olympic facilities, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said on Friday, commenting on the situation with the Chernomorets company that has declared itself bankrupt.
Kozak called an “unpleasant” episode during the preparations for the Olympic Games in Sochi the fact that one of the Moscow-based banks, the founder of Chernomorets, has not fulfilled its promise to build a hotel for the Olympic Games participants in the Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay. “For two years it (the investor) has repeatedly promised in a written form and verbally that the project would be implemented. At first it had a land plot for 400 rooms, but it asked for another 400 and was given more land. An unexpectedly in May 2011 it declared that it cannot implement either the project it intended to do on its land or on the land that was provided by the State Corporation Olympstroi,” the RF deputy prime minister said.
Kozak noted that all measures have been taken to find a new investor. “The hotel is under construction today, we have found another investor - the Olymp Plus company.” “In March they came to this site and are already virtually completing the construction and installation work. They have confidence that we have prevented this risk,” the official said. He added that there have been other, less significant cases of abandonment of projects, but they cannot affect the preparations for the Olympics. “This is the negative side of the attraction of private businesses to the implementation of projects,” Kozak said. “These are the sides of activities in which the state does not intervene and does not control them, and they then give surprises.”