AFI Development

AFI Development is a Moscow developer of housing, offices, shopping centres and industrial parks, with its office on Berezhkovskaya embankment. Globes called it in 2011 "the Russian development arm of Lev Leviev-controlled Africa-Israel Investments". It was listed in London. In September 2016 Leviev bought about 65% of it from Africa-Israel, and in October 2019 he offered $110 million for the rest, with a view to delisting. Its hotel business is two medical-resort hotels in Stavropol Krai, run as the Plaza SPA network. [1,2,3,4]

Kislovodsk

Plaza SPA Kislovodsk is the older house. Vedomosti, in August 2022, described it as a five-star hotel of 275 rooms, built after AFI bought a sanatorium building from trade-union entities in the early 2000s; "In December 2005 the complex was opened". AFI invested 2.5 billion roubles in its renovation in 2022. AFI's own page says the house "appeared on the market in 2005". In 2025 RBC Style called it the "flagship" of the network, marking its twentieth anniversary, and reported a "Best Hotel-Sanatorium in Russia" award that spring. [4,5,6]

Zheleznovodsk

Lenta.ru reported in July 2012 that AFI held six sites in the region, two in Zheleznovodsk and four in Kislovodsk, acquired in early 2007, and that Plaza Spa Zheleznovodsk, 134 rooms on 12,700 square metres, opened on 15 June 2012 at a cost of about $40 million. AFI's own release set the official opening ceremony for 15 October 2012, after some three months of soft opening. Lenta also reported a frozen five-star "Versailles" project of 90 rooms in Kislovodsk, revived that year; nothing read shows it built. [5,7]

The Trade-Union Sanatoriums Case

In February 2022 the Prosecutor General's Office sued the trade-union federation FNPR and others in Moscow's Gagarinsky District Court for 34 sanatoriums of the Caucasian Mineral Waters, received by the unions in the 1990s. AFI's companies were among the defendants. On 12 August 2022 the court granted the claim; Vedomosti wrote that AFI "may lose" both Plaza hotels. On 21 June 2023 RAPSI reported that the Moscow City Court had overturned that ruling as "not conforming to procedural norms". In January 2025 Stavropol's governor said the 2022 lawsuit had held up agreements with the unions and that talks would resume. [4,8,9,10]

Editorial note — ⚑ Lenta.ru calls the Zheleznovodsk house three-star and dates its opening 15 June 2012; Vedomosti calls it four-star, and AFI dates the official opening 15 October 2012. Both readings are printed. ⚑ The 21 June 2023 date is RAPSI's publication date; the ruling's own date is not given, nor whether the case was sent back for retrial. No later ruling was found; the hotels' ownership after 2023 is not established here. ⚑ That the Zheleznovodsk house was the former Kalinin sanatorium rests on one consultant quoted by Vedomosti. [4,5,7,9]