The Arbitration Court of the Samara Region began considering the claim of Laguna LLC against the Department of Finance of the city administration and the mayor’s office. The company demands to pay losses in the amount of more than 2.4 billion rubles. This is reported in the file of arbitration cases.
The amount of the claim includes real damage in the amount of 433.9 million rubles. and lost profits in the amount of more than 1.9 billion rubles, as well as the cost of paying the state fee. The requirements are related to the fact that the company has lost the opportunity to build housing in part of the forest park named after. 60th anniversary of Soviet power in the Kirov region. These plots with an area of 10 thousand square meters. m and 188.9 thousand sq.m are located within the boundaries of the Moscow highway, Tashkentskaya, Stara Zagora and Alma-Atinskaya streets.
The administration of Samara emphasizes that they do not agree with the claims of Laguna LLC and will challenge them in court: “All decisions that have been made regarding the park of the 60th anniversary of Soviet power since December 2018, including those related to changing the zoning of land plots, dictated by the opinion of Samara residents that the park should be preserved as a green zone.”
Initially, an initiative group of residents of the Promyshlenny and Kirovsky districts was worried about the fate of the park after trying to start construction on this territory, and the beginning of cutting down trees caused a public outcry and an information wave in the media and social networks, the mayor’s office notes.
The administration of Samara previously conducted a public opinion poll on the further development of the park, which was attended by about five thousand citizens. Of these, 90% voted to keep the park intact. As a result, the mayor’s office decided to amend the Master Plan and the Building and Land Use Rules. These amendments provided for the change of the zone of land plots in the park, owned by Laguna LLC, from C-3 (a zone of development with objects of local importance) to P3 (a zone of natural landscapes). Then the territory of the park was included in the existing forest park green belt around Samara. Thus, the territory received a status that implies a ban on uncontrolled felling of trees.
“We believe that the decision, formed in dialogue with residents and for residents, should not lead to the fact that the city budget, which is formed, among other things, from taxpayers’ funds, will incur costs in an amount commensurate with the annual budget for road repairs,” they emphasize at city hall.
• According to SPARK-Interfax, LLC Laguna was registered in October 2013. The authorized capital of the company is 1 million rubles. The director of the company is Sergey Kalinin, the founders are Hasmik Ayvazyan, Valeria Kovalenko and COUNTRY CLUB LLC.
Previously, representatives of the company have repeatedly tried to achieve development and start it on the territory of this park. So, in May 2021, the arbitration court first allowed the use of these plots for the placement of shops and multi-storey residential buildings, invalidating the refusal of the regional Rosreestr in state cadastral registration and state registration of rights to these lands. However, the appeal soon canceled this decision – it also stood in the Arbitration Court of the Volga District. As a result, the company was unable to achieve state cadastral registration and registration of rights to land for shops and residential construction.
The territory of the park was supposed to be developed back in 2017, but the work was postponed. In December 2018, the Department of Urban Planning of Samara allowed Stroyresurs LLC to prepare documents for the planning of this territory for development with capital construction projects. However, local activists opposed this and insisted on maintaining the green zone.
According to Marina Zhirova, a partner at the Yablokov and Partners Law Office, Candidate of Law Sciences, judicial practice shows that the recovery of damages is often associated with significant difficulties for the plaintiff: “In order to prove real damage, the plaintiff must provide reliable documented evidence that he has incurred or should incur costs as a result of the violation of his rights and that this is due precisely to unlawful actions / inaction on the part of the defendant. He must prove the guilt of the administration in violating its obligations and the causal relationship between the actions / inaction of the mayor’s office and the consequences.”
The expert emphasizes that if the real damage in practice is still possible to recover in the presence of the specified evidence, then it is more difficult to prove the lost profit. In addition, Marina Zhirova notes that “in general, the judicial system of the Russian Federation is quite loyal to the bodies associated with the budget and budget money.”
