Kerimov's Nafta-Moskva holding has acquired Mosstroiekonombank, whose chief asset is the 64,000-square-meter office and retail complex in downtown Moscow, the paper reported, citing an unidentified city official and a bank employee.
No information about the structure or the size of the deal was provided, and Nafta-Moskva declined to comment Thursday.
A spokeswoman for Plaza Gruppa, the company managing the property, said she was unaware of a change in ownership.
Nafta-Moskva is the successor to Soviet oil trader Soyuznefteexport. Its financial details are not publicly disclosed.
If the report is confirmed, it would not be the first time that Nafta-Moskva ventured into real estate. Earlier this year, media reported that Nafta-Moskva was planning to build a 2.7 million-square-meter "private town" on 430 hectares of land it had acquired around Novorizhskoye Shosse, northwest of Moscow.
Kerimov, a 39-year-old State Duma deputy, is the country's richest politician and its 16th-richest person, with a $2.6 billion fortune, according to Forbes magazine's Russian edition. He owns minority stakes in Sberbank and in state-controlled monopolies Gazprom and Unified Energy Systems.
Mosstroiekonombank is City Hall's authorized bank. Deputy Mayor Vladimir Resin, Moscow's construction chief, heads its board of directors.
The bank financed numerous large-scale construction projects in the 1990s, including Christ the Savior Cathedral, Moscow's Third Ring Road, 2.5 million square meters' worth of new housing and several business centers, the bank said.
(MT, Bloomberg)
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