It was yours, but became the Russian Federation's. In Sochi, land plots under individual housing construction of thousands of families were arrested

Julia Suntsova

In Sochi, thousands of families are at risk of being left without property.

For many people, this is the only housing, some bought plots for matkapital, others took loans for the purchase and still haven't paid off the banks.

11.066 plots were arrested by the Central District Court of Sochi – the owners were forbidden to perform registration actions with them, that is, to fully dispose of: sell, give, inherit, pledge, etc. Why do they take away property from citizens?

The Investigative Department for the Department of Internal Affairs of Sochi suddenly discovered the "theft of land" that has been going on for a quarter of a century - and not just ordinary lands, but literally sections of the Sochi National Reserve. The crime, according to investigators, began in 1998 and is committed not by anyone, but by officials from among the employees of the city hall.

According to the opinion of the IC, as a result of their criminal conspiracy and forgery, 11,066 plots with an area of 4,983.01 hectares in the amount of 1 billion rubles escaped from federal property (!)

What does the owners of the plots have to do with it, you ask. As part of this criminal case on a particularly large fraud initiated in September 2021, thousands of land plots were arrested. The Russian FEDERATION has been recognized as an official victim, its violated rights in this case are being restored by an employee of the Interregional Territorial Administration of the Federal Agency for State Property Management in the Krasnodar Territory.

It remains, of course, a mystery – how is it that for twenty-five years no one noticed how thousands of hectares were cut and alienated in the Sochi Nature Reserve, and only now, when the land was in the hands of conscientious purchasers, large-scale theft suddenly came to light?

Some owners managed to build on the plots. The plots themselves, by market standards, are estimated here at 20-25 million rubles. Houses and buildings - in the same amount.

The owners went through all the stages of alienation and state registration of these lands according to all the rules, and the authorities, for their part, coordinated land surveying, projects, laying communications, putting buildings into operation, accepted taxes.

"Even if we assume hypothetical embezzlement of Sochi City Hall officials on such a scale that no one has noticed (or even approved) for 25 years, why on earth should bona fide purchasers suffer today? Transactions on the transfer of land plots, on the issuance of building permits, no one is thinking of revoking, after all. None of the acts of the local authorities has been recognized as illegal or invalid today! The plots were listed in the documents "for individual housing construction", so they remained, no one bothered to change the status. Maybe they are just planning to transfer them with expensive buildings and communications into the hands of new, more correct owners? ", – the lawyer Marat Dayanov comments.The most incredible thing about this epic is that for two years the accused did not appear before the investigation.

The crime lasts, it is known from the investigators that it is allegedly committed to this day by someone from among the employees of the city hall, but THEY CANNOT ESTABLISH THEM. The crime has not been proven, has not been brought to court, there are no perpetrators, but people are already being taken away from land on the sole grounds that they are allegedly criminally acquired!

The criminal case was initiated on September 21, 2021 on the grounds of a crime under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

"During the preliminary investigation, it was established that unidentified persons, through the use of forged documents on the rights to land plots and the location of the coordinates of their borders, submitted to the state registration authorities of rights located on the territory of Sochi, Krasnodar Territory, in the period from 1998 to the present, acquired ownership rights to 11.066 land plots formed by contrary to the property interests of the Russian Federation at the expense of federal property lands, with a total area of 4 983.01 hectares.", - it is written in the resolution on the initiation of criminal proceedings.

The Central Court of the city of Sochi, at the request of the prosecutor, imposed an arrest on the plots as interim measures – "to prevent further criminal encroachments":"An arrest was imposed to prevent the further disposal of these real estate objects as a subject of criminal encroachment and to ensure the execution of a sentence in civil lawsuits and other property penalties, as well as to prevent the commission of new crimes related to the resale of land plots, the ownership of which was registered in violation of the current legislation of the Russian Federation". - the court decision says, rendered by Judge Sergei Martynenko.

Simultaneously with the criminal case, the Environmental Prosecutor's Office is currently filing hundreds of vindication lawsuits against citizens in all courts of Sochi – the agency asks to remove their plots from state cadastral registration and "recognize the rights of current owners to these plots as missing (?!)".

The first owners of the plots received them in the 1980s and 1990s when organizing collective gardening. The lands were allocated from the national park according to the laws and state acts in force at that time. Personalized resolutions were issued "On the re-registration of rights to the land of horticultural associations". Since then, most of the allocated plots have changed their owners more than once. But in 2013, officials conducted an audit and decided that several hectares in Sochi National Park were suddenly not enough, the goal was set: to return.

The basis of court decisions on the seizure of land from people is also based on the conclusions of a specialist, the head of the scientific department of the Sochi National Park State University Sergey Samsonov, written as a carbon copy, about the alleged intersection (overlap) of private owners' land plots with federal property lands. The plots that were mistakenly transferred to private ownership used to be part of the national park, the official writes. This conclusion is made on the basis of the materials of the forest management of 1997.

The principle of arrests is also interesting: in one cadastral quarter, some plots fall under it, and others do not, and fortune works in a staggered manner.

Some of the disputed lands were acquired by buyers from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and major cities of Siberia. They do not live permanently in Sochi, and they hoped to use the plots as seasonal cottages. Someone considered these lands as an investment. Many of these owners still do not suspect that real estate has become very movable, shaky, literally flowing out of their hands.

Owners learn about the arrests of their plots mostly by accident – from social networks, often they are not even notified. People are in deep despair, especially after they understand how the courts are held.

"I have been living in Sochi since 1972. In 1986, our family was allocated a plot of land from a fish factory, in 1993 they issued a document of ownership", - says Lyudmila Sh., a member of the former horticultural non-profit partnership "Rybak" of the Adler district.After the death of her husband, the woman sold a dorm room and took out a loan for the construction of a house, issued the property in stages in strict accordance with all the established requirements of the executive committee (administration) at that time.

Today it is her only home.

The arguments of the owners are not taken into account at all, applications and petitions are not attached.

"We are hostages of the situation. The property that has belonged to us for decades on completely legal grounds is being brutally taken away from us. At the same time, neither we nor our representatives are allowed into the courts. Meetings are held almost behind closed doors, on Sundays. The judge and the prosecutor do it alone, so that no one interferes. We, the defendants, are told: "Day off! The court is closed, the court is not working." If someone breaks through to the meeting, where claims for the seizure of their property are being considered, they will not even listen to him. - people say.About 600 plots have already been seized by the court – where people did not have time to build, and the plots can be formally recognized as ownerless or where there are buildings, but again, formally they can already be recognized as emergency and not pay any compensation".

People are simply told that scammers have sold you, deal with them, and we are just protecting the interests of the Russian Federation here.

"Unfortunately, today we very often forget about the rights of bona fide purchasers when defending the interests of the state – if you check the judicial practice, it turns out that this concept simply does not work with us!", – lawyer Marat Dayanov comments on "NI".

Yekaterina Loskutova from the Rostov region has dreamed of moving to Sochi all her life.

To live in nature with her child, to build a future, as she says.

- To fulfill my dream in 2020, I purchased a plot on Krasnaya Polyana, in Snezhny Lane, and started building a house. At the moment, the construction of the frame of the house has been completed. 32 million rubles were spent on the purchase of the plot, almost 35 million rubles have already been invested in the construction of the house.

In January 2023, a lawsuit was filed against me, the purpose of which was the confiscation of my land plot along with an unfinished house. Attached to the claim is a scheme according to which part of my site is part of the Sochi National Park. I am extremely shocked by this information.

Firstly, I am a conscientious buyer of the plot, and secondly, I am the fourth owner in a row. All purchase and sale documents were issued officially in the Rosreestr. The construction of the house is also carried out under a contract, all the rules and norms of construction are strictly observed. After developing the house project, I received a construction permit from the administration of the urban-type settlement Krasnaya Polyana. No questions have ever arisen during the preparation of documents before.

The facade of the plot faces an asphalt road, which belongs to the municipality, the entire infrastructure, including main gas, central sewerage, electricity, etc. typically urban communications are also present. A school has been built nearby, and public transport has been organized. Neighbors live around my plot, right along the borders - in households that have been commissioned and put into operation. There was no vegetation on my plot. I see absolutely no signs that my site is part of a national park. It simply cannot be integrated there without the complete destruction of an entire residential area and the destruction of all engineering and household communications", - says Yekaterina NI.

The woman has no other real estate. They are waiting for the completion of construction with the child in a rented apartment. In case of withdrawal of the plot, in addition to the broken dream, the family still has a huge outstanding debt.

"The situation is absurd, it puts me and the child in a life-threatening situation, tramples on my civil rights as a bona fide buyer and as the owner of private property. In my opinion, this is a banal raider seizure. Criminal, forcible alienation of property is carried out by law enforcement and judicial authorities", - Yekaterina expresses her opinion.

Yelena Harutyunyan, who bought a plot in Adler, remains with debts and five small children on her hands.

"Two years ago I sold my house and bought a plot in the village of Chereshnya for 15 million rubles. As expected, she filed a notice of the start of construction, conducted electricity, put up a concrete fence. I found out about the seizure of property when they refused a construction permit. Together with the police station, all my cards and accounts with funds were arrested. Bailiffs even come to my 80-year-old parents with disabilities and threaten to take away property from them as well. Despair is complete! The judges refuse to attach petitions confirming the legality of the acquisition of land and buildings and adamantly make a decision – to withdraw! So in the 90s the bandits took it away, and now they have apparently moved to power and are taking it away again. I don't understand at all how we should live now. There is no law!", - the interlocutor tells "NI".

The veteran of the Great Patriotic War Ivan Ivanovich Zavgorodny sent a letter to the Kremlin-a cocked hat. He compared the court's decision in absentia to deprive him of his land plot in Sochi with a shell that flew into him. The veteran asked the president to stop this robbery.

"Almost 3,500 plots allegedly illegally withdrawn and transferred to gardeners appear in the initiated criminal case. 11 thousand plots, in fact, already about 50 thousand, because the demarcation was carried out. Over the past ten years, law enforcement agencies have actually been trying to investigate this case for more than the first time, but they have to stop it again and again for lack of results. The only result is that people are unnerved and painted with the image of thieves of state property. The only goal, in my opinion, is to stop the sale of plots and, if possible, artificially devalue them", - says lawyer Alexander Sorokin, who represents the interests of about seventy owners in the courts.

In the sessions, the prosecutor raises outdated forest maps of 1997 as evidence, which have long been reset by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation on the establishment of the boundaries of the Sochi National Reserve. In addition, the forest amnesty is completely ignored, according to which all discrepancies between the State Forest Register and the Unified State Register of Real Estate are interpreted in favor of the EGRN, that is, in favor of the owners of the plots.