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- Home rule: residents of the premium residential complex have achieved a criminal case against the Criminal Code
Home rule: residents of the premium residential complex have achieved a criminal case against the Criminal Code
The activities of the company, which manages several elite residential complexes in Moscow, became the reason for the initiation of a criminal case, Izvestia found out. Residents of the Sydney City complex complained of unjustified overstatement of bills, non-functioning elevators, and forgery of signatures in the minutes of the general meeting of owners. As a result, law enforcement agencies check the management company for fraud, provision of services that threaten security, and forgery of documents. The case is not an isolated one — the Prosecutor General's Office told Izvestia that in 2025, the supervisory authorities satisfied almost 100 thousand complaints about the work of the Criminal Code and substandard utilities. Such appeals are regularly and massively received by the State Duma, the deputies confirmed.
Russians' problems with management companies
The provision of services of inadequate quality, non—fulfillment by management companies of obligations to maintain housing stock, overstatement of tariffs and utility bills - 96.9 thousand complaints on these grounds in 2025 were satisfied by the prosecutor's office, the Prosecutor General's Office told Izvestia.
In some cases, the actions of the Criminal Code became the reason for the initiation of criminal cases. Lawyer Sergey Uchitel, who represents the interests of apartment owners in Moscow's Sydney City residential complex, told Izvestia about one of them. According to him, according to the residents, a criminal case was opened under articles on fraud, provision of services of inadequate quality that threaten security, and forgery of documents in connection with the activities of the management company C & U Lime LLC.
"Since October 2024, the management company has started billing tenants on a monthly basis for major repairs and illegally collecting these payments," he said. — In the response of the State Housing Inspectorate of the city of Moscow, it is indicated that the planned effective date of the decision on the assessment of contributions for the overhaul of residential premises is 04/13/2025, and the assessment of contributions before the entry into force of the decision of the owners is unlawful.
The management company has received a warning about the inadmissibility of the violation. She was required to cancel the assessment of contributions for the overhaul and recalculate the owners who had paid illegal contributions.
"Despite this, numerous appeals from owners to the Criminal Code demanding that illegal charges be stopped and the funds withheld be returned are ignored," he said. — The money collected is not in a special account and is not transferred to the Capital Repair Fund. On March 25, 2026, the Khoroshevsky District Court satisfied my claim for recovery of illegally accrued utility bills in the amount of more than 800 thousand rubles from CC & U Lime.
According to the lawyer, since the beginning of the heating season, there have been constant interruptions with heating and hot water, frequent leaks of heating systems in apartments, confirmed by applications and videos. Residents are regularly confronted with the fact that elevators break down. The examination confirmed that the overload warning system was not working, the directions of the cabin doors and other shortcomings were not adjusted.
— The voice accompaniment is in Chinese, the temperature in the elevator corresponds to the street temperature, — said one of the residents. — There have been cases of emergency braking with passengers, residents are forced to climb on foot to high floors, including pregnant women.
In all three houses of the residential complex, the supply and exhaust ventilation system is not functioning, which leads to dampness, persistent odors, mold and mildew in the apartments. In addition, the fact of forgery of the owners' general voting ballots was recorded — this was confirmed by a court decision.
"The results of the meetings held by CC & U Lime in December 2023 were declared invalid,— the lawyer noted. — It took 1.5 years to get through all the instances.
The management company operates in accordance with the terms of the management agreement and the requirements of housing legislation, and the organization has provided explanations and taken measures on issues that have caused complaints from residents, C& U Lime told Izvestia.
"The final legal assessment of the current situation will be given in the legal field," they said. — On April 1, 2026, the house will be transferred to another management organization. At the same time, our communication regarding residents is always as open as possible — we have a contact center, messenger chats, an application, concierges, and a control room. We strive to resolve emerging issues as quickly as possible."
Izvestia sent a request to the Investigative Committee.
How the Criminal Code is held accountable
A similar conflict arose in the premium residential complex "Hai". According to the residents, the management company Siu Hyde Management LLC committed systemic violations in the operation of the residential complex. In particular, they complain about technical failures, financial fraud and ignoring the demands of residents.
"Since the summer of 2024, the centralized air conditioning system has not been functioning," one of the apartment owners in the residential complex told Izvestia. — The temperature in apartments reaches +42 °C, which is dangerous for health, especially for children. Elevators are operated without mandatory inspection and insurance coverage, and three of the six elevators in the towers are disabled.
Another problem is power outages without notification with subsequent connection fees, leaks in parking lots and residential areas with the destruction of finishes, accidents, littering of fire exits with debris and the lack of repair of critical defects.
There are also complaints about falsification of meeting ballots, inflated tariffs, fictitious garbage collection, and the imposition of paid services without licenses. There are also questions about unsanitary conditions, workers living in non-residential buildings, and the presence of rodents.
— Over the last quarter, the situation with the management of the residential complex has deteriorated significantly and is characterized by a systemic conflict between the owners and the management company, — said one of the tenants. — The management organization continues to maintain control over the house, despite legal disputes and attempts by the owners to change the way they manage it.
Izvestia sent a request to Siu Hyde Management LLC.
In February 2026, two large management companies in Chelyabinsk, Moy Dom Ural and DEZ Kalininsky District, lost their licenses to service apartment buildings, the regional prosecutor's office reported. As established in the department, both companies improperly performed duties on housing management. As a result of the measures taken, the State Housing Inspectorate excluded 174 apartment buildings previously managed by these companies from the licensed register. Their activities have been officially terminated.
In July 2025, the Prosecutor's office of the Krasnodar Territory conducted inspections against the Repino management company. There were signs of forgery of minutes of general meetings in 30 apartment buildings, where the issue of increasing the amount of fees for the maintenance of communal property was discussed. Criminal cases were initiated based on the inspection materials.
Why are there so many complaints about management companies?
Dissatisfaction with the work of management companies is widespread, confirmed by Alexander Yakubovsky, a member of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Communal Services.
— Hundreds of thousands of appeals are recorded annually, — he noted. — In regional housing inspections in a number of subjects, up to 60-70% of all complaints in the housing and communal services sector are related to the work of the Management Committee. The checks also show systemic violations. In recent years, about 100-110 billion rubles of unjustified expenses have been excluded from tariffs. This directly affects the level of trust of citizens.
There are more than 40,000 management organizations operating in Russia, and even with a relatively small number of unscrupulous companies, the scale of the problem becomes significant, Alexander Yakubovsky emphasized.
"The reasons are systemic," he believes. — The first is the high degree of deterioration of the housing stock and communal infrastructure. In a number of regions, network wear exceeds 50-60%, and in these conditions, management companies are forced to work in a continuous troubleshooting mode, rather than scheduled maintenance.
The second is the lack of transparency. Residents often do not understand what the payment consists of and what work is actually being done. This increases distrust, especially against the background of detected violations.
"Low ownership involvement also plays a role," he said. — Formally, it is the residents who make the key decisions: from choosing a management company to approving a list of jobs. In practice, participation in the management of houses remains minimal and issues of control effectiveness remain. Supervision exists, but the response to violations is not always prompt, and measures do not always create a sufficient deterrent effect.
As a result, according to Alexander Yakubovsky, a persistent problem of distrust is forming, which has been accumulating for years and is now perceived as systemic.
Residents' complaints about the work of management companies are systemic in nature and are related not to one specific situation, but to the structure of the entire management of apartment buildings, Pavel Sklyanchuk, an expert of the Popular Front in the housing and communal services sector, confirmed. Discontent, as a rule, is permanent: it sometimes increases to a "boiling point", then goes into a phase of forced patience, but does not completely disappear.
— It is possible to change the situation only through the reform of approaches, — he believes. — Firstly, if a licensing system already exists, it needs to be supplemented with self‑regulation mechanisms and a real cleansing of the market from unscrupulous players.
It is also important to reconsider the approach to the role of such organizations: it is more logical to talk not about "managing" companies, but about "service" companies in order to fix that they work in the interests of the owners, and not on them. In addition, according to Pavel Sklyanchuk, the level of housing literacy of citizens is extremely low — many do not know their rights, duties, or instruments of influence on the Criminal Code. Working simultaneously in all these three areas can be the first step towards correcting the current situation.
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