As it became known to Kommersant, the Moscow City Court canceled the decision of the Gagarinsky District Court, which satisfied the unprecedented claim of the Prosecutor General’s Office to turn 34 sanatorium-resort institutions consisting of 1,763 real estate objects into state revenue, as not in accordance with procedural standards. All of them belonged to the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), but then, as the authorities considered, they were illegally privatized and sold.
On Monday, the Moscow City Court’s appellate instance ruled on complaints from dozens of owners of resort and sanatorium facilities, including the FNPR, in the Caucasus Mineral Waters. All of them demanded to cancel the decision of the judge of the Gagarinsky District Court of Moscow, Elena Chernysh, who in August last year, having satisfied the claim of the Prosecutor General’s Office, turned them into the property of the state.
The City Court, as one of the participants in the proceedings, Denis Yurov, partner of the Delcredere Bar Association, told Kommersant, canceled this decision and adopted a new one, according to which the objects seized from their owners were returned to them. “The parties will receive a written decision in a few days, so it is difficult to say what the court was guided by,” added Mr. Yurov, whose client, according to him, absolutely legally acquired a facility privatized many years ago in Kavminvody.
The card of the Moscow City Court in this case states that the decision of the court of first instance was canceled due to “violation or incorrect application of the rules of procedural law.” After that, a new decision was made by the appeal itself.
The claim of the supervisory agency reported that in accordance with the decrees of President Boris Yeltsin and the decisions of the Russian government, the FNPR received 59 property complexes free of charge, including 34 sanatorium-and-spa institutions, consisting of 1763 real estate objects back in the 90s of the last century. According to the law, the privatization of objects was prohibited, and they were allowed to be used exclusively for sanatorium treatment and recreation of citizens. Instead, the Prosecutor General’s Office found, FNPR head Mikhail Shmakov “together with other officials and governing bodies” of the trade unions organized the privatization and sale of assets, which led to “the loss of their healing and healing properties.” Transactions were carried out through Resort Management (Holding) LLC, established in 2004 by the executive committee of the FNPR under the chairmanship of the same Mr. Shmakov. Nikolai Murashko, who is now a member of the regional Duma from United Russia, became the head of the company.
According to the estimates of supervision, the trade unions managed to implement 131 objects out of 24 trade union institutions for the amount of 3.3 billion rubles. Among them were, for example, objects of the famous Pyatigorsk balneo-mud treatment facility.
Earlier, the supervision tried to sue some of these objects in the courts of the Stavropol Territory, but they rejected the relevant claims. After that, the application was submitted to the capital court. The employees of the sanatoriums themselves feared that the proceedings could paralyze their work, but this did not happen.
In the Prosecutor General’s Office, Kommersant did not officially comment on the decision of the Moscow City Court, and a source close to supervision said that the decision to appeal or not would be made after studying the text of the judicial act.
