General Director of one of the leading network operators of retail real estate in Ukraine explained the situation on the market, attendance of shopping malls, disputes with security forces and readiness for a difficult winter.

– At what stage is your case now in a dispute with law enforcement agencies? Were you able to defend your case?
– The position of the Arricano Group remains unchanged from the very beginning. We believe that there is an attempted raider seizure of Arricano's assets using influence on law enforcement agencies. Also, for almost a year now, we have been struggling with an attempt to block the operating activities of the group of companies in Ukraine by unjustified arrests of accounts and an attempt to transfer the assets of the group of companies to the management of ARMA (National Agency of Ukraine for Finding, Tracing, and Management of Assets Derived from Corruption and Other Crimes), in order to then gain full control over them. The key and, in fact, the only argument of the law enforcement agencies was the assumption about the alleged financing of the Russian Federation in 2022-2023 at the expense of the rental income of the Arricano Group of Companies in Ukraine from four shopping malls by bank transfers. But it is obvious to everyone that such assumptions are not only absurd, but also impossible in principle, because any such payments cannot be made due to the direct ban of the regulating authority.

The active phase of the above events lasted from the beginning of autumn 2023 to the end of spring 2024 in the form of several waves of searches, arrests of shopping malls and attempts to transfer objects to management through ARMA, arrests of bank accounts of several companies from the group, etc.

Due to the active consistent position of the company's lawyers, the involvement of the office of the business ombudsman and other institutions and specialized organizations, in particular, from the EU, the obvious facts and arguments of the company were taken into account by the courts of various instances. Bank accounts are unblocked, the assets of companies are exempt from seizure.

The current situation is assessed by the company positively, but with cautious optimism, because we are still wary of the resumption of pressure, since the criminal proceedings have not been closed. Lawyers believe that this may indicate the likelihood of a repetition of the situation, because, unfortunately, there are no signs that interest in the company's business could disappear anywhere.

– What are the company's operating indicators now, did the arrests of accounts and the pressure of the so-called "law enforcement officers" affect your business?
– On the one hand, this issue is very painful for all of us. First of all, because such a struggle takes a lot of time and resources from the teams, which could be spent on business development, and, therefore, on the creation of new jobs, additional revenues to the budgets of all levels, etc. But, on the other hand, it is inspiring that the professionalism of our team is given a sign. Therefore, I personally consider the results of the operational activities of the Arricano Group in Ukraine to be good, taking into account all external factors related to the war, uncertainty and pressure of the security forces.

Over the nine months of this year, our Kyiv projects demonstrated positive dynamics. Revenues have increased, and occupancy remains very high. Currently, the occupancy rate in Prospekt shopping mall is 100%, and the vacancy rate in RayON shopping mall is technical and does not exceed 1%.

Instead, regional projects in Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih, taking into account the difficult security situation, show a decrease in revenues. This was also affected by the replacement of the grocery operator – the period of downtime of the hypermarket at the time of repair work affected the annual result.

The situation with the project in Kryvyi Rih is more complicated, since, in addition to replacing the product operator, the process of restoring the shopping mall building after a rocket attack on the city in January of this year, with partial closure of damaged premises, which as a result led to the loss of almost half of the project's revenues, continued.

However, currently the filling rate of regional projects is more than 93% and we are working with potential tenants on openings early next year. As for me, this is a good result, especially given the external pressure.

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