The Western Commercial Court of Appeal has upheld a ruling ordering the return to the Lviv municipal territorial community of a land plot in Riasne-Ruska which in 2020 was transferred to a garage construction cooperative in breach of the law. The ruling has entered into legal force and is subject to enforcement.
According to the Legal Department of Lviv City Council, the case concerns a plot of 0.1231 ha in Riasne-Ruska. It was granted into the ownership of the service cooperative “Garage Construction Cooperative “Avtosvit”” by Riasne-Ruska Village Council before this territory was incorporated into the Lviv municipal territorial community.
The court established that the cooperative had been registered on the eve of the land allocation: on 19 October 2020, and already on 22 October the village council adopted a decision to transfer the plot. The cooperative has only three founders, while the area of the land is more than four times the limit set by law for garage construction.
During the proceedings it was established that the plot had been allocated in breach of Article 41 of the Land Code of Ukraine. In particular, land should be allocated to garage construction cooperatives with the designated purpose of “residential and public development land”, whereas in this case the “transport land” category was used. Taking these circumstances into account, the court found the acquirer’s conduct to be in bad faith and ordered that the plot be recovered for the benefit of the territorial community.
The Legal Department notes that this is not the only instance where Riasne-Ruska Village Council transferred land plots to garage cooperatives in violation of statutory requirements. Earlier, the Commercial Court of Lviv Region had already delivered judgments in three cases brought by the Deputy Head of the Frankivsk District Prosecutor’s Office in the interests of Lviv City Council.
Under these rulings, the community is to have a further three plots returned, with areas of 0.0986 ha, 0.1068 ha and 2.4982 ha. In total, this amounts to almost 2.7 hectares of land that must be returned to the control of the Lviv territorial community.