Dobkin: Kharkiv Regional Council could sell Metalist Stadium

“I don’t rule out that the regional council could propose selling
this stadium. If someone wants to autocratically manage the stadium as a
private person, then, please, there’s its cost. We’ll make the
calculation openly and publicly, put it up for sale, and let someone buy
it. This is a facility, and this is not the same thing as the Metalist
football club,” Dobkin said at a press conference on Friday, while
commenting on an appeal sent by Kharkiv City Council to Kharkiv Regional
Council with a request to transfer the Metalist Stadium to the
municipal ownership of the city.

Dobkin recalled that the stadium was a municipally owned facility and
that it had been reconstructed using the funds of not only a private
investor, but also the budgets of different levels.

“Every municipally owned facility should be managed as effectively as
possible… If the Metalist Stadium can currently bring in a profit, it
would be absolutely wrong to not take advantage of this. Who does this –
FC Metalist, the region or the city – is already a matter of internal
arrangements,” he said.

As reported, on December 19, Kharkiv City Council asked Kharkiv
Regional Council to transfer the Metalist Stadium to the municipal
ownership of the city. FC Metalist Kharkiv President Oleksandr
Yaroslavsky said that he would stop funding the club if the stadium is
passed to the city.

The businessman was the general investor and coordinator of Kharkiv’s
preparations for Euro 2012, having invested his own funds in the
construction of the Metalist Stadium, a five-star hotel, the city
airport, and the implementation of other projects.