Land inquiry: why the court refused to seize the "Meyendorf Gardens" plots
The court refused to return land in an elite village in the Moscow Region to the state. Lawyers explain that such a decision could have been influenced by the conclusion that the land sale procedure was observed or that there were no signs of invalidity of transactions. The supervisory authority demanded the seizure of 13 plots of about 100 hectares of land in Barvikha near Moscow in January this year. After almost a year of proceedings, a Moscow Region court rejected the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office and recognized the owners of the plots as owners of the land. Lawyers called this decision unexpected, but "clearly not final". On whether there are further prospects for this dispute - in the material "Izvestia".
What is the reason for the lawsuit of the Prosecutor General's office against the owners of "Mayendorf Gardens"?
Odintsovo City Court of the Moscow region on Monday, December 9, denied the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office for the seizure of land plots of the Moscow region village "Meyendorf Gardens" from their current owners. This may be due to the fact that one of the key defendants in the case, Uralkhim owner Dmitry Mazepin, had earlier recognized the claims of the supervisory agency as justified, according to lawyers interviewed by Izvestia.
The plots of land belonged to the Barvikha government sanatorium, which was under the jurisdiction of the presidential administration. But in 2001, the Moscow Region Government withdrew them from the Forest Fund for commercial development.
Sanatorium "Barvikha"
In January this year, the General Prosecutor's Office filed a lawsuit with the court to seize 13 plots occupying about 100 hectares of land in Barvikha near Moscow. Among the owners are businessmen, members of the Forbes list. These are Dmitry Mazepin, former owner of Uralchem, Nadezhda Advokatova, wife of restaurateur Arkady Novikov, and Alexei Bogachev , entrepreneur and co-founder of the Magnit chain.
According to the Prosecutor General's Office, the lands were alienated from federal ownership through a chain of transactions. Prosecutors consider this process illegal and extremely unprofitable for the state. As follows from the lawsuit, multi-billion plots of land were alienated from the state's ownership not at the market price, but at the standard price of a square meter of land in the Moscow region. In 2001 it amounted to only 55 rubles. While the market price of the plots was estimated by experts of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry at 3.5-4.5 thousand rubles.
As a result, the plots, for which the state should, according to experts, have received 3.5 billion rubles, went into private hands for 54.4 million rubles. At the same time, the amount of the restoration of the castle, according to the act of work performed, amounted to 321 million rubles - such a figure was heard in court.
According to the case materials, this cost was considered underestimated by the supervisory authority. In addition, the prosecutor stated in court that the investment agreement on restoration was just a cover for a sale and purchase transaction. And the buyer who was supposed to restore the castle of Baroness Mayendorf in exchange for the land, Country-Pro LLC (liquidated in 2009) did not fulfill its obligations. The supervisory agency considers this company to be a one-day operation, created specifically to take the lands into private hands and never having the necessary capacity to carry out restoration work.
The defendants' lawyers disagreed with these arguments. In court, they said that elite land plots with an area of 2,500 to 21,000 square meters in Barvikha near Moscow, worth several billion rubles, were purchased "through tenth hands" by bona fide buyers. And one of the defendants in the lawsuit, the founder of Kolchuga gun stores and owner of commercial real estate in the center of Moscow, Mikhail Khubutia, told Izvestia that despite having paid off the loan, he could not get permission from the authorities to build the building for a long time.
The recognition by Dmitry Mazepin "for unknown reasons" of the claims of the Prosecutor General's Office as justified has significantly complicated the task of the defense and required additional evidence of their good faith, representatives of one of the defendants in the suit, Alexander Orlov, noted in a conversation with Izvestia.
- The dispute was considered in the court of first instance for about a year, and we had to conduct a whole investigation to provide such evidence, " said the defendant's lawyers Oleg Sampaev and Roland Zantaraya. - As a result, we managed to prove that at the time the land was taken out of state ownership, the current defendants had nothing to do with this process.
The Ministry of Municipal Property, which was involved in the suit as a third party, stated at one of the sessions that it considers the sale of land in Barvikha to be legal. According to the document provided by the agency, the contract was drawn up in accordance with the regulations in force at the time.
At one of the sessions in Odintsovo court, Dmitry Mazepin, the founder of the United Chemical Company Uralchem, admitted the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office to seize land in the closed village of Mayendorf Gardens in favor of the state. Prior to that, the businessman denied the validity of the claims. According to the businessman's new statement (Izvestia has it), the fact that the lands of the Barvikha sanatorium of the Presidential Property Management Directorate were illegally withdrawn from state ownership "has been objectively confirmed.
According to Izvestia's source familiar with the details of the conflict, it was Dmitry Mazepin's litigation for the right to travel through the Barvikha sanatorium and his "principled position" on this issue that could have provoked the lawsuit filed by the Prosecutor General's Office.
Back in 2019, the businessman demanded access to his plot along the territory of the Barvikha sanatorium, which even now belongs to the presidential administration. The issue could not be settled in a pre-trial order, and the businessman appealed to the court of first, then cassation and appeal instances. The litigation drew the attention of the supervisory agency to the problem of privatization of the land surrounding the sanatorium.
Compromise decision
From the point of view of the law, the Odintsovo court's decision is expected, since the current owners of the land plots are bona fide purchasers, believes Konstantin Trapaidze, chairman of the Vash Legal Attorney Bar Association.
- Perhaps this time the court proceeded from the fact that at the time when the plots were sold, the former owner of the castle did not take proper measures to force the new owner of the adjacent lands to fulfill the terms of the contract - that is, the promised restoration and recovery of damages from him," the lawyer believes.
In his opinion, Dmitry Mazepin's attempt to obtain the right of way through the Barvikha sanatorium to his land could indeed provoke a lawsuit.
- The Prosecutor General's Office will challenge it, of course, and it will be important here to what extent this is a political issue. Based on the fact that Mazepin, the Presidential Administration and the Prosecutor General's Office were arguing, and Mazepin was forced to recognize the unreasonableness of his claims (about driving through the territory of the Barvikha sanatorium - Ed.)," believes Konstantin Trapaidze.
The decision of the Odintsovo court was not expected, but it cannot be called unprecedented either, says Mikhail Chugunov, Counselor of the Law Firm "YUST".
- The claims of the prosecutor's office differ in the content of the requirements and the set of circumstances on which they are based, - explained the lawyer. - For example,there are so-called "anti-corruption" lawsuits, when the prosecutor's office demands to seize this or that property sold in violation of anti-corruption legislation. Such disputes are almost always decided in favor of the prosecutor's office. The situation with the Barvikha lands is more like an ordinary civil dispute, in which decisions in favor of the defendants are made more often.
Russian law, the lawyers added, is not precedent-setting, so the decision itself is unlikely to change anything in judicial practice, unless the dispute reaches the Supreme or Constitutional Courts, where it will be evaluated. In the latter case, the position of the higher instances may affect the formation of practice.
- There may be many reasons for rejection of a claim: the court could come to the conclusion that the land sale procedure was observed, it could fail to see the signs of invalidity of transactions, confirm that the acquisition was for free, and so on, " says Mikhail Chugunov. - Finally, as the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court have repeatedly noted recently, the rules of limitation should be applied to bona fide purchasers in respect of such claims. This, too, could have been the basis for the dismissal of the lawsuit.
According to lawyers, the current court decision is a good signal for the current land owners, but it is far from final. They agreed that the Prosecutor General's Office is likely to challenge the Odintsovo court's decision on appeal.
- If the Prosecutor General's Office appeals the decision, the higher instances may well overturn or change it, for example, by denying the claim against some owners and granting it to others," said Mikhail Chugunov. - At the same time, if the cassation and supervisory instances are limited only to verification of compliance with the rules of law, then in the appellate instance the case is reexamined on the merits with the study of evidence.
Konstantin Trapaidze believes that the final decision will be a compromise in any case.
- I think that the key point will be the decision on Mazepin's suit, and if the acute issues are resolved, the parties are likely to come to an agreement that suits both parties. Apparently, the mediators who participated in this case managed to find the key pain points of this conflict and somehow resolve them. These things most likely played a key role here, along with the material and political weight of the defendants," says Konstantin Trapaidze.
"Izvestia" sent a request to the Prosecutor General's Office asking whether the supervisory agency will appeal the Odintsovo court's decision. At the time of publication, no response had been received.
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