In the Odesa Commercial Court, a regular meeting was held regarding consideration of the lawsuit of the military prosecutor's office against "Basco" LLC regarding the claim of a property complex that belonged to the Ministry of Defense 20 years ago.
Let us briefly remind you that this object, located on the street Promyslovoy 37, in Odesa, was legally and transparently, at market value, sold by the Ministry of Defense to the limited liability company Basko at the end of 2004. Then, in 2008, part of the property passed into the possession of PE "Atlant".
In the prosecutor's lawsuit, it was unreasonably claimed that the property of the Ministry of Defense, in the conditions of war, became the property of a citizen of the Russian Federation.
It was with the refutation of this fact that the trial began. The defendant's lawyer provided the court with extracts from the State Register, which testify that the beneficiary of PE "Atlant" is a citizen of the United States of America, and not the Russian Federation.
"Did the prosecutor understand that he, during the war, filed a lawsuit, manipulatively referring to the fact that the land of the Ministry of Defense became the property of the Russian Federation, and it was under this pretext that he offered to take away the property bought 20 years ago, and by a completely different company? Yana Srybna, lawyer of Basko LLC, said.
This question remained unanswered.
However, the court rejected the submitted documents on formal grounds, which it promised to refer to in the text of the court decision.
A strange order
Prosecutor of the Specialized Prosecutor's Office in the field of defense of the Southern region, Viktor Bogatyr, in turn, tried to prove that the head of the Central Department of the Ministry of Defense, Dmytro Isaenko, had no right to grant permission to the director of the state-owned enterprise "Southern Military Construction" to sell the facility. According to the military prosecutor, the power of attorney to sign such documents was canceled by the order of the Minister of Defense.
However, since the available documents convincingly prove that the power of attorney was valid both at the time of sale and one and a half years after the agreement, until April 2006, the lawyers put the plaintiffs in a dead end with uncomfortable questions.
It turned out that the prosecutor did not know that there are simply no legal grounds for canceling a power of attorney by "orders" without corresponding registration notarial actions. According to the Law, a notarial power of attorney can be revoked only by contacting a notary public.
"Furthermore, Article 249 of the Civil Code says that a person who issued a power of attorney and later revoked it must immediately notify the person to whom the power of attorney was previously issued. If this was not done, then the person has the right to continue to represent, - stressed Yana Srybna. "Neither the Minister of Defense nor any other official has the authority to recognize an invalid notarial power of attorney on the basis of their order."
And the Ministry of Defense turned to the notary to cancel the power of attorney only on April 01.04.2006, XNUMX, one and a half years after the object was sold!
It was also noted at the meeting that the prosecutor's office became interested in this issue only in 2019: then the department already tried to sue, but the Supreme Court denied the prosecutor the right to defend the interests of the Ministry of Defense.
In this regard, judge Serhii Gut asked the plaintiff whether he knew about the decision of the Commercial Court on similar cases related to the property of "Pivdenmiskbud".
The fact is that in 2019, the prosecutor's office filed about three dozen similar lawsuits, which related to other objects that belonged to "Pivdenmiskbud" and also fell out of the ownership of the Ministry of Defense. And all these lawsuits were rejected, since the statute of limitations in such cases had already passed.
"We don't have the information"...
Therefore, the defendant's lawyers broke down the evidence presented in the prosecution's lawsuit that "Atlant" PE, which bought this property complex in 2008, is an unscrupulous acquirer. To a direct question, whether the department has evidence of its claims, the prosecutor had to answer in the negative, therefore, he deliberately stated false facts when filing his claim.
The main question remained without an answer from the representative of the Ministry of Defense, who was at the meeting. Why didn't the Ministry of Defense try to return the property complex for two decades, and this issue arose only now, and only at the initiative of the prosecutor's office?
One got the impression that the prosecutor's office did not "get lost" at all during the filing of the lawsuit and did not even try to rely on the facts. For example, during the trial, Basko's lawyer surprised the plaintiffs with the information that, starting in 2005, SE "Pivdenvoiskbud" provided the Ministry of Defense with a report listing the company's property. And already in this list For two decades there has been no object on the street. Promyslova, which means the Ministry of Defense was great informed about this fact, agreed with it, and did not try to challenge the transaction in court.
Moreover, the State Property Fund also officially confirmed that already in 2006 it was in the list of the Ministry's property of this there was no object.
The plaintiff was unable to provide any explanation for all these facts, citing a lack of information. The next hearing is scheduled for February 22 — and given all the circumstances of the case, there is hope that the court will issue a decision very quickly.
