The sixteen-storey building on Gagarin Avenue, known to the inhabitants of Odessa as the "Klimov Tower", was put up for sale by the National Bank of Ukraine. It is the fourth attempt to sell the building.
A detached office center with a total area of ​​more than 21 thousand square meters, with ordinary and VIP-office premises, conference room, restaurant and storage, will be sold at auction with an initial price of UAH 251.5 million.
The skyscraper began to be built in 1988 as a computing center for the regional statistics department. But with the collapse of the USSR, the building turned into an abandoned unfinished building, and the statistics department, thanks to technical progress, was able to solve its problems with several personal computers instead of a whole building stuffed with electronics. Then the unfinished building fell into the ownership of businessman and member of Parliament Leonid Klimov, and in 2004 was completed as an office building of Imexbank owned by Klimov.
Then the building had a very difficult fate. After the financial crisis of 2009, Imexbank received a stabilization loan from the NBU for almost UAH 3 billion, secured by its real estate, which then never returned. And in 2014-2015. the bank generally went bankrupt and was liquidated. By that time, the total debts amounted to 12 billion, most of this amount sunk through loans to legal entities associated with the Klimov empire.
The bankrupt's property, including several business and sports centers, as well as the Chernomorets stadium, turned out to be problematic - either overvalued, or encumbered with operational management and long-term lease agreements with related structures. Also, these loans were secured by a personal guarantee of the owner of the bank, Leonid Klimov, who left Ukraine. The former manager of Imexbank, Yuri Gramatik, was put on the wanted list.
Since then, court cases and criminal proceedings have been going on around the pledged property of Imexbank. The building on Gagarin Avenue was repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to put up for sale in 2018, 2019, 2020.
The National Bank is defending its right to the pledged property in the courts. The building of the business center on Gagarina is legally "clean": it is not encumbered with contracts and belongs to the NBU on the basis of an agreement on satisfying the claims of the mortgagee, which was registered on July 19, 2021.
