Former Yugoslav Residence in New York Sold for $12 Million

NEW YORK, (Patria) - The successor states of the SFRY signed in New York an agreement on the joint sale of the SFRY residential apartment on New York's Park Avenue for a total of $12.1 million, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia announced today.

The statement said that the contract was signed yesterday and that the joint sale of the apartment in New York represents the first such case in the process of implementing Annex B of the Agreement on Succession Issues.

That apartment had been empty since 1992, when the last permanent representative of the SFRY to the UN left it, due to which it was not in a “representative condition”.

Serbia is the coordinating state for the sale of that apartment and from the sale it received 39.5 percent of the net income, i.e. $3,487,939.21.

The sale of this real estate will also result in direct savings in this year's budget of Serbia of $108,745, by which amount the allocations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for current maintenance will be reduced.

From the total purchase price received ($12.1 million), the costs of maintaining the apartment in New York from January 1, 1992 until the day of sale (total $3,269,774.16) were deducted. These costs were also distributed among all successor states in proportion to the quotas from Article 3 of Annex B of the Agreement on Succession Issues.

Since Serbia had been paying these costs all the time, those funds will be refunded to it.

The specificity of the apartment in New York is “corporate ownership”, meaning it was not direct ownership, but ownership through possession of 960 shares of “Park-71st Corporation”, as many as the former SFRY had.

The process of joint sale of four more SFRY properties is underway: the permanent mission to the UN in New York, the embassy in Bonn, the embassy in Bern, and the embassy/residence in Tokyo, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia announced.