The company "Kolašin resort & Spa", the investor of the condo hotel "Westin Kolašin Resort" in Bjelasica, is trying to obtain the registration of a mortgage on its property in favor of the company "Royal Nova Home furniture trading LLC" from Dubai.
An unusual request - for the debtor himself to request the registration of a mortgage in favor of the alleged creditor, was rejected twice by the Regional Unit (PJ) of the Real Estate Administration in Kolašin as unfounded.
The construction of the hotel is the first project that the Government included in the list of development projects in the field of tourism in 2019, as part of the economic citizenship program.
Part of the hotel, as "Vijesti" wrote earlier, should be demolished because during construction the investor significantly deviated from the square footage provided for in the project, on the basis of which the building permit was obtained...
But that is not the only problem faced by the company "Kolašin resort & Spa". According to the reports submitted to the Tax Administration, the company has had no sales revenue since its establishment in 2016. In the annual reports on operations, the company entered zero in the item "revenue from sales". The only significant income of the company was in 2021 - of about 1,3 million, and it was reported as "other income from business" in the balance sheets.
"Kolašin resort & Spa", at a time when the government was boasting about investments in Bjalasica and Kolašin and the benefits of the economic citizenship program, was said to be part of the ARNN Group concern from Malaysia. According to available official data, "Kolašin Resort & Spa" was founded in March 2016, representatives are Mohammed Abdul Alim Chowdhury and Nirjhor Salim Chowdhury, who is also the executive director. It also says that it is one hundred percent owned by "Royal Amro Limited".
The investor of the hotel in Bjelasica requested the registration of the mortgage on the basis of "provision of a Pledge Statement, the basis of which is the Project Management Agreement, concluded on November 4, 2019, between" Royal Nova Corporate Services Provider" (project manager) and "Kolašin resort & Spa" (investor ) and Annex I of the contract on project management".
"From the aforementioned Project Management Agreement, concluded on November 4, 2019... it is determined that this is not a debt-receivable, but the contract specifies compensation for the services rendered by the project manager. For the provision of services, the parties have agreed on a success fee, which amounts to 20 percent of the amount that each customer pays to participate in the Economic Citizenship program. From the above, it can be seen that there is no legal basis here - a claim for a pledge statement from Article 321 of the Law on Property Legal Relations...", it says, among other things, in the explanation of the decision of the PJ of the Real Estate Administration to reject the request.
They also explain that the law stipulates "that a foreign person can have the right to a long-term lease, concession, BOT and other private-public partnership arrangements, on immovable property". This, as they reasoned, "means that he cannot establish a mortgage... because it limits property rights".
They also state that the public interest has been determined on the plots on which the mortgage should be registered, with the adoption of the Higher Level Plan of the PPPN Bjelasica and Komovi-Bazno, the area of the Mountain Center "KoIašin 1450" - detailed elaboration, and that as such they have the status of construction land.
The company appealed against the first rejection decision of the PJ, after which the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property accepted the appeal, annulled the decision and sent the case back for a new procedure and decision. However, even after the repeated procedure, the PJ again rejected the request.
The company also appealed against the second solution. In the previous appeal, they stated that "the land in question is for construction and that the first-instance authority is obliged to take into account the numerous practices that exist regarding the registration of mortgages in favor of foreign legal entities." In this sense, they also submitted a property sheet to KO Budva.
From the title deed, it can be seen that a number of pre-contracts for the purchase and sale of real estate were recorded, which should mean that there are a large number of those who have shown the intention to invest, or have invested money through the economic citizenship program, buying apartments in the condo hotel in Bjelasica.
The hotel was returned to the List of Development Projects in 2022, but it is no longer there
Hotel, for which they are from the Government Duško Marković claimed to contribute to the development of the entire north, is not on the current List on the website of the Investment Agency, which contains 15 development projects in the field of tourism from the Economic Citizenship Program.
In 2019, the hotel was included in the economic citizenship program, and the business plan foresees a condo business model of the hotel with an estimated value of 11,3 million euros, 93 accommodation units, with a total capacity of 380 beds. The investor's intention was, as announced at the time, to create 66 new jobs within the hotel complex.
"Kolašin Resort&Spa" previously announced that the ski resort will be managed by the company "York Hotels & Resorts" under the international luxury hotel brand "Westin", with a franchise agreement with the American company "Marriott International USA".
Amendments to the Decision on the criteria, method and procedure for selecting persons who can acquire Montenegrin citizenship, on December 30, 2021, the obligation to submit a bank guarantee in the amount of 50 percent of the minimum investment, for all projects, which is valid until the date of finalization of the project, was introduced. According to the documentation that can be found on the Government's website, on January 25, 2022, the then Ministry of Economic Development sent letters to all investors from the list of development projects in the field of tourism requesting the submission of a bank guarantee.
On January 24, 2022, "Kolašin Resort & Spa" submitted a request to extend the deadline for submitting a bank guarantee for an additional 60 days, which the Ministry did not approve. Then, on March 10, 2022, the government accepted the proposal to exclude the project "Construction of the Kolašin Resort&Spa hotel condo, Kolašin" from the list of development projects in the field of tourism.
However, the company responded again to a new public invitation, and, as it is written in the documentation on the Government's website, it submitted a Business and Dynamic Plan, as a bank guarantee, "after which it was concluded that the formal conditions stipulated by the criteria from the Decision and the Public Invitation were met." .
"In the documentation that was submitted with the application, it was stated that in Kolašin, at a location near the ski track of the Ski Center Kolašin 1450, there is a planned investment in the construction of a hotel with a pre-calculated value of 13 million euros, while the planned financing comes from the company's own funds and its stakeholders. . In order to secure the investment, a bank guarantee issued by Universal Capital Bank was submitted for the amount stipulated by the Decision and the Public Invitation (one million euros)," the Ministry of Economic Development and Tourism writes in the proposal to include the hotel again in the list of development projects in the area. of tourism.
According to that document, the basis of the Special Program, by the time the project was excluded from the list of development projects in the field of tourism, according to the records of the Investment Agency of Montenegro, 8,75 million euros were paid to the investor, while another 7,25 million euros were deposited in the Escrow account.
They explain that it is planned that the hotel "Kolašin Resort & Spa" has a four-star category, operates according to the condo model, has 93 accommodation units, or rather a capacity of 380 beds. Also, the intention of the investor is to create 45 new jobs within the hotel, it is written in the proposal for re-inclusion of the hotel in the list of development projects.
In the Dynamic Plan, which is an integral part of the Business Plan, it is stated that the realization of the investment will be carried out over a maximum of five half-years. The dynamic plan foresees that the complete works will be completed by May 9, 2025 at the latest, which, as explained, is in accordance with the validity period of the bank guarantee. According to projections from the Business Plan, the investment should be repaid in the eighth year of the project.
Appreciating all that, the Government returned the hotel to the List of Development Projects in November 2022.
It was not possible to find out what happened in the meantime from the Ministry of Finance, from which "Vijesti" did not answer questions regarding the current status of that facility until last night.
The inspector issued a decision on forced demolition
The decision to demolish part of the hotel was made by the urban planning and construction inspector, then coordinator for the central region, Novak Lakušić, on February 23 of this year.
Since the company "Kolašin Resort & Spa" did not comply with Lakušić's demolition decision and did not remove the part of the hotel where irregularities were found within the 30-day deadline, the inspector issued a decision on forced eviction on November 22.
As written in the decision, which "Vijesti" had access to, enforcement will be carried out by the executive services of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property, i.e. the company "Protection of Space of Montenegro", at the expense of the investor.
An appeal is allowed against the decision on execution, which can only refer to the time, place and manner of execution and cannot dispute the correctness of the execution of the decision.
According to the earlier explanation of Lakušić's decision to prohibit further construction, and then the decision to demolish, a basement of about four and a half meters was built under the lamella B, one of the three of which the hotel consists, which was not foreseen in the revised main project. The basement level of lamella C, the inspector stated, also does not correspond to the revised main project, so instead of the designed 219,99 square meters, the useful area "was carried out in the full area under that lamella". A discrepancy with the project was noted in the part of the constructed attic space as well. As it was determined during the inspection, instead of the projected 320 square meters of useful space in the attic, about 810 square meters were built.
The total deviation from the revised main project in the attic and basement parts, according to unofficial information from "Vijesti", amounts to about one thousand square meters.
During the inspection, as written in Lakušić's minutes, the investor did not have a certified and signed version of the original revised main project, so, as stated, the inspector inspected the original documentation at the Ministry.
The demolition decision from February this year was preceded by a construction ban decision from August 23, 2023. Just a few months after that, "Kolašin resort & Spa" initiated the registration of a mortgage on a dozen plots of land in Bjelasica where the hotel is being built, in favor of a company from the United States Arab Emirates.
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