Russia's former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov en route to the news conference
Photo: Dmitry Lekay
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They Skipped the Media Stage for Sosnovkas
Sosnovka-1 and Sosnovka-3 residences that belong to Mikhail Kasyanov and Mikhail Fridman might have been seized to-date, said lawyers of the owners, specifying the claims filed by Rosimushchestvo to invalidate Sosnovkas’ privatization have not future.
On August 10, 2005, Rosimushchestvo filed the claims related to Sosnovka-1 and Sosnovka-3 residences allegedly belonging to former PM Mikhail Kasyanov and Alfa Group CEO Mikhail Fridman. The defendants are four companies mentioned in the criminal case of Sosnovkas’ privatization, including the federally-owned VPK-Invest and State Enterprise for Military Property Disposal as well as Veltex and Amely.
The claims say that in September 1996, Evikhon leased the residences from Goskomimushchestvo (State Property Committee) for 49 years. Then the cottages were transferred to VPK-Invest, which in February 2003, was authorized to publicly auction the residences. State Enterprise for Military Property Disposal was the auction arranger. As a result, Sosnovka-1 was sold to Amely, Sosnovka-3 was acquired by Veltex.
In Rosimushchestvo, they are sure the above deals resulted in illegal “alienation of the assets from the RF property” and should be acknowledged null and void, the more so that the value of the residences was clearly underestimated and there was no public announcement of the auction. In addition, Rosimushchestvo seeks invalidation for the lease agreements entered into with Evikhon due to obvious violations.
“In both cases, the patterns for selling the state cottages were the same,” said State Duma’s deputy Alexander Khinshtein, who had triggered investigation. At that time, Amely was controlled by Mikhail Kasyanov, Fridman controlled Veltex. “Kasyanov bought out his cottage [for 10.1 million rubles]. As Veltex co-owner, head of Alfa Group preferred not to buy out Sosnovka-3. He just contributed 10.5 million rubles to stock capital of the firm, a bit more than the sum paid by Veltex at the auction for that cottage.”
Alfa Group lawyers told Kommersant off-the-record, the claims are ungrounded even for the only reason that their limitation term has expired. “One could challenge such documents in court within a year, but the lease agreements for Sosnovkas were made far back in 1996.”
Nevertheless, Rosimushchestvo still may adjudge the state residences. To this effect, it would suffice to prove that no auction announcement had been published in the mass media, as it is the material requirement for auction holding, the lawyer said, supposing the residences might have been seized already, at least the court could have ruled to the effect during three days of the date of the claims.
The prosecutors are holding a parallel probe into Sosnovkas’ privatization. Rosprirodnadzor is involved as well, having spotted some premises built by Kasyanov in time of the residence reconstruction. Oleg Mitvol, deputy head at Rosprirodnadzor, specified they had applied to the prosecutors for demolition.
www.kommersant.ru
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 02, 2005
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