Anatoly Petukhov Pays $23M For Pembroke Pines Strip Mall
304 Southwest 145th Avenue (Google Maps, Getty)
A Russian ex-police general — allegedly tied to a public corruption scandal in his motherland — dropped $23 million for a Pembroke Pines strip mall.
An entity managed by Anatoly Petukhov bought the two-building retail property at 304 Southwest 145th Avenue, records show. The deal breaks down to $689 per square foot for the 33,400-square-foot mall.
The seller, an affiliate of Hart Lyman, a commercial real estate firm based in East Syracuse, New York, paid $7.9 million for the land in 2014, and completed the mall three years later, records show.
The property’s tenant roster includes Xfinity, the Habit Burger Grill, Pieology Pizzeria, Firebirds Wood Fired Grill, European Wax Center, and AT&T. Hart Lyman still owns a restaurant leased to Twin Peaks that is also on the 4-acre site.
Since immigrating to Sunny Isles Beach in 2010, Petukhov has amassed a South Florida real estate portfolio worth about $40 million. The funds were allegedly obtained from shaking down local businessmen for police protection in Russia, according to court filings in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
He was the chief deputy of a Russian elite law enforcement unit that investigated organized crime, but the task force was so corrupt it was eventually shut down following a scandal, according to the Miami Herald, which first reported about Petukhov.
The Miami Herald obtained a copy of a sealed 2013 civil lawsuit against Petukhov entities and his wife, Yulia Petukhova, alleging the ex-general extorted tens of millions of dollars from the owners of a department store chain in Moscow when he was a high ranking police official. Petukhov used portions of his allegedly illicit gains to pay a combined $37.5 million for eight South Florida properties, including a Fort Lauderdale strip mall and three office buildings in Miami-Dade and Broward. The lawsuit was privately settled in 2014.
Last year, a Petukhov affiliate sold a waterfront five-bedroom home in Miami Beach’s Hibiscus Island for $8.3 million, records show. The Russian real estate investor still owns another Hibiscus Island waterfront property, 350 South Hibiscus Drive, that he bought for $7 million in 2015. In 2019, Petukhov completed an eight-bedroom, 10-bathroom modern mansion on the site. He listed it for $17 million in 2017 while the home was under construction, and again for the same price in 2019 when it was finished. Both listings were taken down, according to Zillow.
It’s been a quiet start in 2023 for big retail trades in South Florida. This month, Los Angeles-based Randall Realty Group paid $15 million for an office and retail building in Palm Beach.
