The owner mortgaged the asset housing the pharmaceutical warehouses of the Ministry of Health to a banking institution for a loan.
As also stated in his statements on state radio, the Director of the Industrial and Technology Service of the Ministry of Commerce, Christos Fotiadis, the Bank, rightfully, is claiming the property, which now belongs to it, to sell it to another entrepreneur.
For this reason, the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, and Industry, to which the piece of land on which the asset is built belongs, informed the Ministry of Health that the drug warehouses need to be relocated.
Fotiadis clarified that the Bank cannot lease a property but must sell it.
“For the last three years, temporarily, the rent is paid by the Ministry of Health to the Bank, and this cannot continue. The Bank must sell the asset,” he said.
What Fotiadis mentioned is also recorded in the Audit Service’s report (2019) regarding this asset: “On 24.1.2019, the Bank, as a mortgage lender of the owning company, in a letter to the Ministry of Energy, stated that it is considering purchasing all the rights to the property in question and requested the Ministry’s approval.”
In another part of his statements, the director of the relevant state service commented on the amount of rent paid by the Ministry of Health from 2004 to date, stating that “it is not right to claim without proper calculations that the rent is high, as someone needs to investigate what the market rent is in that specific industrial area.”
Regarding the value of the property compared to its amount, the Audit Service in 2019 stated in its report:
“According to the data, until today (2019), an amount of €2.8 million has been paid to the owner for rents and configuration works, i.e., €923/sq.m., which is, in our opinion, higher than the construction cost of the warehouses. Based on a valuation made in 2003, the market value of the assets was £840,000, and in a forced sale, £630,000.”
In his statements on state radio, the spokesperson for the Audit Service, Marios Petridis, also stated that “based on the property valuation made then by a private appraiser, the £840,000 corresponds to approximately €1.7 million. Until 2019, the Ministry of Health paid rents of about €2.8 million. This difference is apparent, and the contract continues. We also talk about illegality from 2018 because the asset did not have a final approval certificate,” he concluded.
