Save Alexandra from destitution and homelessness

Hello. I’m asking for financial help for a Russian friend who is in a desperate situation. Her story is complex and not easy to tell but she is facing destitution and homelessness because of the cruelty of her family and the traps within the Russian legal system. She suffers from an acute form of asthma which is made worse by the stress and hunger brought on by her situation. She is reliant on inhalers which the Russian state medical service will not supply and is in constant fear of running out of these. Her asthma is so bad that she frequently has to call an ambulance for emergency treatment.

I will try to give a concise account of her descent into this personal hell but be assured she is a decent and worthy person, a genuine case, and help her if you can.

I met Alexandra Ponomareva online, through the Quora discussion web site to which she generously contributes many intelligent and knowledgeable answers to other people’s questions. We became email correspondents and over the past two to 3 years she has explained her story to me, one which has been corroborated by independent people both in Russia and the United Kingdom.

Things started to go wrong for Alice in 1998, a bad year for many Russians but particularly for Alexandra because her father died. Her mother (divorced from him) had previously vented all her spitefulness on him but now turned it on Alexandra.

Below - Alice in her teens with her beloved father

Above - Alexandra in her professional days

After a successful career with DHL and other big companies she was encouraged by her mother to go to the United Kingdom to gain an MBA (from Oxford Brookes University. While she was away studying her mother managed to lose all her savings and decided she would never give back to her daughter the half share in the small Moscow studio apartment which she had naively given by putting her purchase into their joint names.

While she was studying, her father’s second family decided to dispute her father’s Will and started court action to deprive her of property that she had inherited. Alexandra researched the law, represented herself in court and won the cases. She went to live at her late grandfather’s dacha outside St Petersburg to get away from her mother. She borrowed money from some banks to renovate the cottage but soon her step-brother took her to court to gain control of the property, the value of which had shot up due to Gazprom building a new headquarters nearby. Again Alexandra represented herself in court and won the case, retaining a 7/18 share of the dacha in the judgement. She was not done with court appearances however because her mother (her own mother !) took her to court because she would not agree to sell their apartment in St Petersburg (owned 9/10 by Alexandra and 1/10 by her mother) in order to raise 3 million roubles to buy her mother an apartment in Moscow. Once again Alexandra won the case, representing herself.

All this litigation prevented her from earning a living and after her defeat in court her mother took revenge by refusing, as legal if not moral joint owner, to allow the Moscow studio apartment to be rented out, depriving Alexandra of her only income at a time when her debts to the banks were rising from the costs of fighting the court cases and interest compounding.

So despite owning fractions of three properties Alexandra was in a very bad financial situation, particularly as it is very difficult in Russia to sell shares in a property and actually illegal to do so in the case of a one-bedroom studio flat. It is also impossible to borrow money from legitimate lenders on mortgage against property that is not wholly owned by the borrower. In order to survive Alexandra has had to borrow money from backstreet ‘mafia’ individuals against her shares in the properties but with no income from which to pay extortionate interest rates the net has been closing on her and there will soon be no escape from eviction.

It might be argued that Alexandra has been naïve in the past and unwise in standing up for herself against her relations that have treated her so badly. However I see a decent, hard working, intelligent and brave human being who against so many odds has fought her corner but now fought herself to a standstill, trapped in a situation that she does not deserve, literally starving and fearful of what may become of her.

Below - Alexandra now, gaunt and haunted but still fighting

Meanwhile her mother continues to persecute her (again she had to defend herself in court just a few weeks ago) and her step-brother refuses to help her at all even though he is very well off and also lives in St Petersburg. To someone like me, living in “the West” it is hard to believe that people could be so mean and vindictive to a close relative whose life is at risk from both illness and hardship. Please, if you can feel sympathy for Alice’s plight, give generously to help her regain a life that bears some semblance to the normality that we more fortunate individuals enjoy….