Unscrupulous management companies are removed from the circle

The State Duma yesterday adopted a law on including in the register of disqualified persons the founders of management companies (MCs), whose licenses were cancelled, in order to combat the practice when they create one after another new organizations replacing unscrupulous companies that have left the market. Experts welcome the restriction of the ability of such persons to create management companies, but they doubt the effectiveness of such measures, including due to systemic problems in the house management market.

Changes to the Housing Code, aimed at closing the loophole for the creation of management companies by unscrupulous persons, were approved by deputies yesterday in the second and third readings. The document assumes that the register of disqualified persons will include not only information about directors of management companies whose licenses have been revoked, but also the founders of such organizations. Persons can remain on such a register for three years, and during this period the founders will not be able to create other management companies.

The need for this is explained by the fact that in practice the “scheme” of creating chains of unscrupulous management companies is becoming widespread. Thus, as noted in the explanatory note, a management company that provides poor quality services and accumulates debts to resource supply organizations (RSOs) eventually goes bankrupt and its license is revoked, but the same founders create a new legal entity and receive an “empty” license without houses under management, and then “with the active assistance of the previous management company, the houses are transferred to the management of a newly created company, which begins the whole cycle anew.”

In such situations, directors of management companies are most often held accountable, while the founders “as a rule remain out of sight” of law enforcement agencies, although they are usually the actual managers of the management company. At the same time, the authors of the document note, residents often have to re-pay for services that were not performed by the old management company, and RSOs try to re-invoice them for previously provided utility services that the bankrupt company did not pay for.

Let us note that this applies not only to bankruptcy – a management company can lose its license if two gross violations per year are detected in its activities (this is, for example, failure to conclude an agreement for the maintenance of gas supply systems or continued work with a house, the right to manage which the company has lost). There are also gross violations, which, if repeated during the year, entail exclusion from the license of the right to manage a specific house – this is, for example, the presence of arrears to the RSO for resources (in the amount of at least two average monthly payment obligations). In this part, the Ministry of Construction proposes to include in the list of gross violations the presence of a debt to the regional operator for waste removal – a draft amendment to the licensing rules of the management company has already been prepared by the department.

As Irina Gentsler, director of the “Urban Economy” direction of the Institute of Urban Economics Foundation, notes, “it’s difficult to say that this is a very widespread problem, but such cases are most often associated with the fact that companies have large debts to RSO and go bankrupt so as not to repay them ” According to Popular Front analyst Pavel Sklyanchuk, even isolated cases result in “many months of suffering for residents from the fact that their houses are managed by management companies that do not actually maintain the house.” In general, he welcomes the restrictions in this area, but notes that this is unlikely to have a significant impact on improving the situation – “the nut has been tightened half a turn, but for one ban, as a rule, there are several ways to get around it.” As Irina Gentsler adds, the changes are “patching holes”, since systemic problems remain in the market – for example, qualifications are not actually assessed as part of licensing, and owners cannot control the targeted expenditure of funds by management companies.

Evgenia Kryuchkova