The owners of the Sofiyskiy Fitness Center, an elite fitness club in the heart of Kyiv near Sofiivska Square, lost control of their 13-year-old business after another company, waving a court order, simply walked into the premises and took it over on May 25.
Trouble started brewing at the end of last year.
The Ryabchenko family, which owns the club, was told by a company called BF Group on Dec. 30 that they were in default on a $15 million loan – a loan that they say they don’t owe.
Moreover, property rights to the fitness club, which were claimed to be collateral to the loan, had been seized.
The very next day, BF Group took over the mortgage and the property rights of the club. The company is led by Yuriy Hryshchenko, an aide to People’s Front lawmaker Andriy Ivanchuk.
Over the last five months, the Ryabchenkos have been trying to convince the courts that the right of ownership was transferred to BF Group illegally and that the case was based on forged documents.
“The company Sofiyskiy has never taken any loans,” Iryna Ryabchenko says, referring to the company she owns that runs the fitness center. “They’ve simply stolen our home.”
Ryabchenko says that Cyprus-based Efenes Properties Limited, another of her companies, which officially owns the building of the club, doesn’t owe any money either. The company running the club rents the building from Efenes Properties Limited, while Ryabchenko owns both companies.
Ryabchenko, with Efenes Properties Limited, in a parallel court process, appealed the court decision about granting BF Group the ownership on the part of the building arguing that their claims about Ryabchenko’s loan debts were based on forged documents. The appeal was satisfied on May 24.
Despite this, BF Group claims the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine issued a final ruling on May 29 stating that Sofiyskiy was in default on a loan.
However, this case cannot be found in the state register of court decisions — there’s only an invitation for the May 29 court hearing.
Ryabchenko says she and her lawyers didn’t get any invitation to the hearing and didn’t attend. She doesn’t even know if it actually took place.
BF Group says they still have not received the court documents from the May 29 hearing and promised to publish them as soon as possible.
The next day after the court decision on refusing BF Group in ownership due to the falsification of documents, on May 25, police and the company’s representatives stormed in and occupied most of the building – about 1,300 square meters. The clients of the club could not even retrieve belongings they had left inside.
Olga Ryabtseva, a long-time client of Sofiyskiy Fitness Center, told the Kyiv Post she hadn’t been allowed to take her swimsuit with her.
“Some guy grabbed my hand and pressed it against the wall,” Ryabtseva said. “It was so painful, I started screaming.”
Eventually her friend was allowed in to pick up her belongings.
After everyone was forced out, the company representative began installing bars on the staircases to block access to the second and third floors of the building, which BF Group claims to own.
Ryabchenko says her lawyers are trying to counter each of BF Group’s actions in the courts and reestablish ownership.
But for the moment, Ryabchenko says BF Group won’t even agree to rent the space to her sports club while the dispute is being resolved. She claims that the BF Group told her he would make the building the People’s Front headquarters.
BF Group CEO Hryshchenko denied this, saying, “That’s just absurd!”
Hryshchenko told the Kyiv Post that BF Group was the rightful owner of the property, and that the premises would be exploited in accordance with its proper use — as a sports and recreation center. But under a different brand name, he said.
Hryshchenko claims the Ryabchenkos were slinging dirt at BF Group and trying to give the case a political spin in order to divert attention from their own debts and fictitious bank and rent operations,which he claimed they have been carrying out for many years.
“Let them pay their debts to the banks first,” Hryshchenko said. “What do the political parties have to do with it?”
Lawmaker Ivanchuk, who lives next to the club’s entrance, called Ryabchenko’s attempts to connect his party to this case defamation of both himself and the party. Ivanchuk says he intends to file a liable case against her in court.
“I have never neither met her nor talked to her. Soon I will send a petition to the court to protect (my) honor and reputation and will demand an apology and the retraction of the false claims,” Ivanchuk wrote on Facebook. “She will have the honor of speaking to me in court for the first time in her life.”
Ukraine’s ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (L) and member of parliament for the People’s Front Andriy Ivanchuk talk in the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv on Jan. 16, 2015. (UNIAN)
Currently, officers of the Security Police of Ukraine and security guards hired by BF Group’s Hryshchenko are sitting inside the building behind the welded bars, defending it from the Ryabchenkos, the fitness center’s previous owners.
Sitting in the part of the building that she still controls, Ryabchenko watched strangers welding shut the doors of the fitness club, while buses full of people in sports outfits were parked outside.
“They have made a cage with 30 animals inside out of our elite fitness club,” she said.
Sofiyskiy owner Iryna Ryabchenko on May 27 talks to the Kyiv Post in a cafeteria located in a part of the fitness center building which she still controls. (Volodymyr Petrov)
When a Kyiv Post reporter tried to talk to the people in the barred part of the building they laughed, and said they did not know whom they were working for.
Kyiv Post editor Alyona Zhuk contributed reporting to this story.
