Shuttered Russian boarding school told to pay Banif Bank €2 million

The operators of a Russian-style boarding school have been ordered to refund over €2 million in loans and interest to BNF Bank.

DHM Property Investments, which is owned by Russian nationals Evgueni and Snezhana Bodishtianu and associate company Zebra Group, were ordered to pay back the ban €2.09 million for some six individual loans.

The boarding school, located in the seaside village of St Paul’s Bay, had already been ordered by a court to refund €58,000 in school fees paid in advance by the mother of a student, shortly before the school abruptly announced it would be closing down.

Iulia Samunina filed her claim after paying exorbitant tuition fees in advance in 2015, but in January 2016 the parents received a letter from the school, informing them that the school would be closing down and would be unable to provide educational services to their children.

Several requests for an explanation went unanswered, but eventually Samunina was informed that the school was unable to continue to operate due to financial problems.

In another similar case, Elza Kulieva, and Victoria Makoeva and Dimitri Perfilev from Germany took Boarding School (Malta) Ltd to court for the refund of fees they paid in 2014 for a three-year term for their children.

The school, which catered for both primary and secondary levels of education, closed its doors in the middle of the scholastic year, just two years into that contract.

The parents claimed that they were forced to send their children back to Russia as no other educational institution on the island offered the same curriculum and could accommodate new students halfway through a year.