The court upheld the claim of the Zhovkva District Prosecutor’s Office and terminated the lease agreement for almost 11 hectares of land with a pond in Lviv district, ordering the company to return this plot to the territorial community.
The case concerns a water fund land plot in the village of Blyshchyvody, more than 9.6 hectares of which is occupied by a pond. In 2020 the company obtained a 40-year lease on it for fishery purposes.
Prosecutors established that the land with the body of water had been transferred for use without the mandatory land auction. Before that, title had been registered to a sluice gate – a hydraulic structure used to regulate the water level in the pond. Initially, ownership was registered to a private individual, and later the structure was contributed to the company’s share capital, without the proper documents to confirm the lawful acquisition of such title.
It was only after this that the company obtained a lease on the land plot together with the pond, bypassing the land auction procedure. Prosecutors also identified other violations: the lease agreement covered only the land plot, although the pond should have been transferred for use together with the land as a single complex, and the company did not have a special water use permit.
To protect the interests of the territorial community, the prosecutor’s office applied to the court seeking to cancel the state registration of title to the hydraulic structure, to invalidate the decisions on the transfer of the land and the lease agreement, and to have the plot with the body of water returned to the community. The court accepted the prosecutors’ arguments and fully upheld the claim. Once the judgment becomes final, prosecutors will take measures to ensure its enforcement.