Russian buyer pays $7M for Mansions at Acqualina unit

Two weeks after units started closing for the newly built Mansions at Acqualina condo tower in Sunny Isles Beach, another sale has been recorded for $7 million — and its buyer is likely a former Russian state official.

Unit 1701 at the 47-story tower was sold in a deed filed Thursday. The document states the buyer was Alexey Knyshov, whose recorded address is the same as that of the unit.

The sale was a trade up for Knyshov, who had owned a unit at the older Acqualina tower with his wife Inna since 2008. That unit, which he sold late last year for $3.22 million, measures 2,214 square feet. Condos at Mansions start at 4,600 square feet, so even if Knyshov bought the smallest unit available, he’s more than doubling the living space.

Michael Goldstein, president of sales at Mansions, had told The Real Deal in June that this wasn’t uncommon — many of the project’s buyers had upgraded from smaller units at Acqualina, which has condos ranging in size from 2,030 square feet to 6,360 square feet.

Knyshov shares a name with a former member of the State Duma, a legislative body in the Russian Federation. He was reportedly accused of profiting from several companies he owned while in office, and resigned from his post in 2012.

A New York Times article about the scandal mentioned that Knyshov owned several properties, including a condo in South Florida. And Dmitry Gudkov, a Russian politician who raised accusations against Knyshov, wrote in a blog post in 2012 that the now-resigned Duma member had owned unit 2005 at Acqualina, which he originally paid $1.25 million to acquire in 2008. 

So far, seven of the Mansion at Acqualina’s 86 units have closed for a total of roughly $23 million. The tower, at 17749 Collins Avenue, is the second Acqualina-branded condo project to be built by developers Jules and Eddie Trump. The Trumps, unaffiliated with Donald, are currently working on the third, Estates at Acqualina, which is expected to finish in 2019.