In the black soil of the Ryazan region, again, as in the nineties, the land issue is being raised. So far, fortunately, in the courts: in the Mikhailovsky district, the owners of farmland are challenging the decision of the regional government to withdraw more than 180 hectares in favor of the Serebryansky Cement Plant. A sign of the times: the attacking side, not without the participation of the governor, uses the mechanism of land acquisition for state needs. But the state interest – unlike the commercial one – is not visible in the case …

The lawsuit against the government of the Ryazan region, the consideration of which has already begun, was filed on behalf of the owners of several confiscated plots – farmers Alexei and Natalia Porotikovs. Last autumn, they received two orders from the regional government – No. 492-r dated September 20 and No. 622-r dated November 10 – that part of their land, a total of approximately 180 hectares, is withdrawn from them for state needs in favor of LLC “Serebryansky cement plant”.

Here it is necessary to add: the legal mechanism of compulsory seizure with compensation for state needs was introduced into the Land Code and related legislative acts at the end of 2014, and for a reason. The goal of the legislators was to ruin the life of land speculators who are buying up land, for example, on the route of a future road or on the site where a new airport will be built. And then they twist the hands of developers, selling plots only on their own terms, or even blocking the construction of an important object for the state.

However, this mechanism, as it turned out, works perfectly in the opposite direction: landowners, hiding behind state needs, can be forced to alienate land already on the terms of the developer. To do this, the developer, who in such a situation can easily be confused with a raider, just needs to enlist the support of the regional authorities, who act as the only moderator in this scheme.

The purpose of the seizure in the documents is “carrying out work related to the use of subsoil.” However, the Porotikovs and their lawyers insist that the order not only violates their rights as owners, but also contradicts the Land Code, which regulates the conditions for the seizure of land for state needs. That is, it is illegal and therefore subject to abolition.

“First of all, the Civil Code of the Russian Federation allows the forced seizure of property only for state or municipal needs,” notes the representative of the plaintiff. – A detailed definition of state needs was given by the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation back in 2016: this term refers to “the needs of public law education, the satisfaction of which is aimed at achieving the interests of society (publicly beneficial goals), which cannot be implemented without the seizure of property that is in private ownership “”.

This means that the seizure of property for the benefit of private entities whose activities “only indirectly serve the interests of society” is not allowed. In our case, no evidence of state or municipal need was presented to the landowners; the Serebryansky Cement Plant also did not try to acquire land by conventional means, without resorting to the withdrawal mechanism. Is it because then the question of price would determine the market?

But from the plant – the “attacking” side – the demand is not as great as from the state, and in this case, from the governor of the Ryazan region Pavel Malkov. It is his signature (still in the rank of Acting Governor) that is on one of the orders (the second was signed by his first deputy Anna Roslyakova). It is not for nothing that the regional government decides on the seizure – officials are obliged to assess the validity of the application and make sure that there are no possible abuses. In this case, this step seems to have been skipped.

“It looks as if, without a legal verification procedure, only on formal grounds, officials of the Ryazan region are seizing land plots owned by private individuals, not for state or municipal needs, but in the interests of the Serebryansky Cement Plant,” the representative sums up. It is this, the landowners claim, that makes this decision unlawful and is the basis for the lawsuit.

After reading the documents, you understand that the regional authorities, who signed the orders, have significant questions. The fact is that the mining allotment in the working settlement of Oktyabrsky already partially belongs to the Serebryansky cement plant (it owns 630 hectares of land). Of these, since 1913, a little more than 141 hectares have been developed by the plant (and have not yet been depleted), and the remaining almost 488 hectares are not being mined at all. The question arises: why does the plant still have land, because there are enough reserves? Moreover, the license issued to the plant for the exploration and production of limestone and clay in this allotment is valid until August 12, 2029. All this the regional authorities, led by the governor, could not help but know.

Simple arithmetic is enough to calculate: with the available capacities, the plant develops only 1 with a small hectare per year – and with almost 500 hectares of reserves, there will be enough for many decades, and not until the expiration of the license. Meanwhile, this license is the only document that Serebryansky Cement Plant LLC presented as a justification for its claims. The question – what are the urgent state or public needs for the withdrawal of new 180 hectares of land for the plant – hangs in the air.

However, if the production motives of the plant to seize new lands are not very clear, then the financial ones can be explained. A few years ago, the plant made a large-scale and rather risky financial transaction – it acquired the assets of the Eurocement group of companies with a total value of 161 billion rubles. This was done with borrowed funds, as a result of which, by the end of 2021, the debt of Serebryansky Cement Plant with its subsidiary could have amounted to more than 188 billion rubles (information about transactions is contained in open sources – and the regional government, of course, is also available).

As collateral for the loan, the company, as can be understood from studying information from open sources, used a pledge of real estate – land plots in the Ryazan region with a total area of ​​​​almost 528 hectares are pledged in BM-Bank. Therefore, the conclusion suggests itself: the plant wants to acquire ownership of the farm’s 180 hectares “to secure its loan obligations or to obtain new credit funds to cover interest on previous loan obligations.” However, these considerations – I wonder why? – did not make Pavel Malkov doubt whether to sign the seizure orders.

There is one more formal obstacle, which was also voiced in the lawsuit. The plant decided to withdraw from the Porotikovs the plots along which the only road goes to other fields belonging to the same farmers. In accordance with the Land Code, what happens on the ground in this case is called the old term “striped strip” and is unacceptable. However, even here the regional authorities for some reason did not see any obstacles.

No less interesting is the question – what will happen to the fields when the land is withdrawn? Now wheat and other agricultural crops are grown on them, the land works and feeds the worker. Their owners. country. In the best case, the new owners, having taken the land, will lease it to someone for the same purposes – and then what can this operation be called if not a raider seizure of a working asset? In the worst case, the lands may become desolated, overgrown with weeds, out of agricultural use, up to the organization of unauthorized dumps on them, because such precedents are known.

And what if, after the quite possible bankruptcy of the current owner, his large reserves of black earth agricultural land will be acquired by someone completely outsider? The issue is also relevant from the point of view of Russia’s food and biological security. Today, we see that these issues cannot be neglected. And it is unlikely that the governor of the region would like to have the ruined agriculture of the region in his track record. After all, the term of office of Pavel Malkov started with the devastating forest fires of 2022, so memorable to the residents, which the region could not cope with on its own.

Proceedings on the claim of the Porotikovs may continue up to the Supreme Court of Russia. And this is very opportunely: the case has a federal dimension. If protection against raiding with the help of the mechanism of seizure of land for state needs is not created at least at the level of judicial precedents, it will turn out that none of the owners of land plots can be reliably protected from such attacks on property.