Court releases from punishment participant of land theft scheme in Odesa region

The Kominternivsky District Court of Odesa Oblast considered a case of illegal seizure of 18 communal land plots with a total area of more than 90 hectares.

This is reported on the website of the Unified Register of Court Decisions.

According to the investigation, the crime was committed in 2019-2020 by a group of people by prior conspiracy. They forged documents, including certificates of work experience in agriculture, and registered plots for fictitious persons in order to transfer the land to a company they controlled.

One of the participants in the scheme, a resident of Velykoploske village, agreed to provide his documents and fake certificates for land registration. Based on these data, he was allocated more than 5 hectares of land, and later another 17 plots were registered. By a court decision, he was charged with fraud, forgery, and misuse of documents. However, since more than five years had passed since the crime was committed and the defendant had not evaded the investigation, the lawyer requested that the client be released from criminal liability due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

The prosecutor did not object, and the court granted the motion. The defendant was released from liability, the case was closed, and the state was charged with the costs of the examinations - more than UAH 2 thousand. No civil lawsuit was filed. However, this decision can be appealed to the court of appeal within a week.

Earlier, Intent wrote that the state managed to return two land plots with a total area of more than 3 hectares, which are actually the bottom of the Adzhalitsky estuary in Odesa region, to the state. After lengthy litigation, the Supreme Court of Ukraine put the final point in this case.

Also, a 1.46-hectare water fund land plot was returned to state ownership. Its value was estimated at over UAH 65 million.

Ірина Глухова