The developer of Carina apartment building owes nearly 20 billion VND to the maintenance fund.

The investor of the Carina Plaza project, which caught fire in the early morning of March 23rd killing 13 people, is Hung Thanh Company - a subsidiary of 577 Investment Joint Stock Company (Stock Code: NBB). Hung Thanh is responsible for managing, operating, and doing business for the Carina Plaza project on behalf of 577 Company.

In early 2017, bThe consolidated financial statements of Company 577 recorded an amount of VND 23.3 billion that the company still owed to the Carina Plaza apartment building maintenance fund. By the end of 2017, this amount had decreased to VND 19.8 billion. This also means that in 2017, the company only spent VND 3.5 billion on maintenance activities for the apartment building where the fire occurred.

The report from Company 577 also shows that, by the end of 2017, the maintenance fees that NBB had to pay to the maintenance fund at its projects amounted to nearly 45 billion VND. Of this amount, besides Carina Plaza, the company also failed to pay approximately 25 billion VND to the maintenance fund of City Gate Tower apartment building (District 8, Ho Chi Minh City).

A Carina resident who is also on the NBB's leadership board said:Although the apartment building was handed over 6 years ago, the developer has yet to hold a residents' meeting to elect a management board. Meanwhile, according to regulations, the management board must hold a meeting of the apartment building within 12 months from the date the apartment building is handed over and put into use, and at least 50% of the apartments must have been handed over.

Mr. Doan Tuong Trieu, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Company 577, stated that Hung Thanh Company is a subsidiary. Therefore, the leadership of Company 577 does not interfere in its operations, and he cannot comment further at this time. He also said that Company 577's immediate priority is to encourage and support the families of the affected residents, while other matters will await the opinion of the relevant authorities.

Carina Plaza is one of NBB's first projects, comprising 6 blocks on an area of ​​1.9 hectares, started in 2008 and handed over at the end of 2011. The apartment complex is located on a plot of land larger than 19,000 m2 on Vo Van Kiet Street. The building has three blocks ranging from 14 to 20 floors, a commercial and entertainment area, and more than 700 apartments.A fire broke out at just after 1:00 AM on March 23rd in the basement of an apartment building, killing 13 people and injuring more than 50; 13 cars and 150 motorbikes were destroyed.

In reality, the situation where developers refuse to organize apartment building conferences and hand over maintenance fees to the residents' representative board is very common in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Recently, in some apartment projects in Hanoi, developers have even claimed that due to business losses, they have spent all the maintenance fund. In other projects, the apartment building's representative board has used the maintenance fund without transparency in its spending... This is also a cause of prolonged disputes in many apartment complexes. However, this situation has not yet been definitively resolved due to the inadequacies of the penalties for these violations.

Regarding Hung Thanh Company, its main activities are investing in and managing industrial, civil, and bridge construction projects, as well as real estate and property trading.

The parent company NBB's financial report also records the issuance of bonds to its Japanese partner, Creed Company, based on collateral in the form of NBB's capital contribution to Hung Thanh Company and the value of Hung Thanh's revenues and income. The total value of the issuance was over 600 billion VND to finance the City Gate Tower project. These bonds have a term of 3 years with an interest rate of 10% per year, meaning NBB was required to pay the full amount to its partner by September 2017.

However, by the end of 2017, the report still recorded this bond debt at VND 265 billion. NBB stated that it had extended the repayment period for the aforementioned overdue bonds until the end of August 2018. This also means that NBB is using Hung Thanh's revenue to repay this debt.