Crime, money laundering, banking
Germany: The ‘Haunted House’ and the Phantom Headquarters
The construction project across from the fur shop here in Augsburg, one of Germany’s oldest cities, has dragged on for years. And Ernst Franzmann is not happy about it.
“There are always new people coming. They work, and then the work is stopped, and it’s littered with garbage. Everyone puts their trash out, and neither the owner nor the architect keeps an eye on this,” Franzmann, a furrier at the venerable Conrad Glock fur and leather shop, said in an interview outside the store this September.
“It’s an eyesore for the city,” added Franzmann, a bespectacled, mustachioed man who complains that the construction site has driven business away.
One early workday afternoon this fall, reporters saw a man walking inside the shell of a building, but no construction activity. Neighbors said only a handful of workers showed up to the site occasionally — though Franzmann said last week that some construction had picked up again. Still, the building has become known among locals as the “haunted house.”,,,,,,
The Abdukadyrs’ stalled building site in Augsburg in September.Credit: RFE/RL
Since 2015, various deadlines have been announced for the six-story, postwar building stretching over an entire block along Schmiedberg, an east-west thoroughfare in central Augsburg. At one point, it was supposed to be a hotel completed by 2016. The current plan is to turn it into an apartment complex, which was supposed to have been built by March 2019.
“Is there even an investor or an architect anymore?” asked a group of Augsburg lawmakers in a February 2018 letter to the mayor about the development.
There is. For the past eight years, the property has been held by the Abdukadyrs’ AKA group of companies.
In fact, the stalled project is just one of several German developments featured on the group’s now-defunct website. They also include a plot of land near Munich and an empty business center in the city that serves as the group’s phantom corporate headquarters.
The precise scope and value of the family’s properties in the country, where real estate ownership and sales records are not publicly accessible, is unclear. But the website also showcased plans and architectural renderings for additional hotel, residential, and business developments in several German cities and towns.
‘Phantom’ Headquarters
Two of the Abdukadyr family’s main companies — AKA Immobilien (now renamed AKA Group) and its subsidiary, AKA Petroleum — are incorporated in Germany. According to their most recent financial filings from 2017, these companies held over $106 million, though this figure likely includes assets outside Germany.
Their listed corporate address, meanwhile, appeared to be nothing more than a deserted business center in an industrial park in eastern Munich when reporters visited on a weekday this fall.
Boxes and construction materials could be seen strewn haphazardly across the ground floor. Not a single person was visible inside. Folding tables and a lonely broken umbrella lay near the dusty main entrance, while the courtyard brimmed with weeds and unkempt bushes.
The empty headquarters of the Abdukadyr family’s group of companies in Munich in September.Credit: RFE/RL
A small mailbox at the front of the premises listed the names of AKA Immobilien, AKA Petroleum, and two other German firms tied to the Abdukadyr network. A paper sign taped to the glass door at the main entrance directed visitors to a business center across the street, where the names of the four companies were listed next to a doorbell. Reporters rang the bell several times but received no answer.
Repeated calls to the number listed on the paper sign went to an answering machine. The calls were returned by the Abdukadyrs’ Munich-based representative, Kudrat Nurmamat. He refused to discuss the family’s business and has since declined subsequent interview requests.
The website of the Munich-based architectural firm Stark Architekten, which has also worked on the Augsburg “haunted house,” describes a proposed $19.2 million renovation of the empty AKA headquarters. It envisions a gleaming, five-star cylindrical glass hotel with 196 rooms — complete with AKA International branding.
“A Uniquely Stupid Fantasy Product”
In addition to the Augsburg “haunted house” and the deserted Munich business center, the Abdukadyr family purchased a plot of land in Vaterstetten, just east of Munich.
The now-defunct AKA website described the planned development there as a 220-room hotel with an expected completion date of December 2017. The Abdukadyrs have since sold the plot.
A rendering of a large hotel the Abdukadyr family planned in Vaterstetten, just east of Munich.Credit: AKA website.
A local official in Vaterstetten said representatives of the group had shown plans for the proposed hotel but had never filed any formal paperwork to move the project forward.
At least two other AKA projects in Germany appear never to have existed at all.
The group’s website featured a proposed hotel in the German spa town of Bad Vilbel, northeast of Frankfurt. A local official responsible for commercial construction told Immobilien Zeitung in April 2018 that the images associated with the purported development were “a uniquely stupid fantasy product without a plot of land.”
This does not appear to have changed.
“I don’t know anything about such a project, so the statement of the city councilman still stands,” Yannick Schwander, a spokesman for the Bad Vilbel mayor’s office, said in an e-mail.
Another proposed project on the dead AKA site was the development of a hotel in the town of Dietzenbach, southeast of Frankfurt. A spokesman for the local government said that no official planning application had ever been submitted for such a project.
But if the Abdukadyr family never completed a real estate development in Germany, it wasn’t for lack of money.
Financial records that Saimaiti provided to reporters indicate that in 2014 and 2015, he wired at least $46 million to accounts held by Abdukadyr and his two main German companies.
Given the family’s financial resources, it’s unclear why so many of their German projects appear to be phantoms. The construction in Augsburg, at least, may now be picking up again. But even if none of the rest are ever completed, they already represent many millions of dollars successfully funneled out of Central Asia.
A German company registration document for one of the Abdukadyrs’ German companies (left) contains the signature of Kudrat Nurmamat, the family’s local representative. On the right is a sham loan agreement provided to reporters by Saimaiti, which he used as justification to transfer the Abdukadyrs’ money to Germany. It also contains Nurmamat’s signature. (Click to enlarge)Credit: OCCRP
(C)OCCRP//by RFE/RL, OCCRP, and Kloop 23 December 2019
https://www.occrp.org/en/plunder-and-patronage/a-real-estate-empire-built-on-dark-money. Click on each country to read more about the properties the Abdukadyrs acquired in:
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