Spokesman for the Moscow Arbitration Court, Dmitry Tafintsev, said the court had frozen several assets of the developer’s two subsidiaries. Though the court is yet to rule on the case, Mirax is likely to lose its best assets in the event of Alfa Bank proving its insolvency. Alfa Bank dragged Mirax to court earlier in August in an attempt to claim the money based on a loan it purchased from Deutsche Bank.

Mirax CEO Sergei Polonsky wrote on his blog that his company would stop financing its construction projects. “We have not managed to get a single bank loan to finance construction in the last year, nor have we sold a single square meter in the past month, nor been paid a single instalment on previously acquired real estate,” he wrote.

Federation Tower was originally planned to be completed in 2010, with one of its occupants being the head office of VTB, Russia’s largest private bank. VTB said it had no plans to move its head office to another location in the near future.

Global real estate adviser, DTZ, in its commercial real estate and investment market overview for 1H 2009 said that a significant decline in new quality office stock was expected in 2010.

The Russian real estate market saw the coming of several international players like H&M, Kika, Carrefour, River Island, Ipekyol, One Step, New Look, IKKS, Bebe, GAP, Palmers, and others in 2009. The first half of the year also saw quality office stock increase by around 820,000 sq m, more than a third of which was class A premises.

Major contributions to investment volumes of $540 million and $230 million in Q1 and Q2 2009 were the sales of Yuzhny Port office centre (50,000 sq m; $300 million) to Sberbank; and that of a 50 per cent share in Voentorg office building (70,000 sq m) to Nafta Co for an estimated $200 million. Though details of the latter deal were not available, it has been suggested that it might have been a non-cash deal, with Nafta Co taking on AST Group’s liabilities.