Petersburg Arbitration Court refused to annul the decision due to which Pokrovsky Fund received 600 hectares of land on the elite side of the Neva River. The fund is "headed by Lyubov Sovershaeva - top-manager of the "National Media Group" (controlled by Rossiya Bank). An entrepreneur – the one who has initiated the process - referred to a police document which ascertains the fact that representatives of "Pokrovsky" had used phony solutions by Leningrad Executive Committee of 1972 to get the land.

Interestingly, the representative of the Federal Property Management Agency brought to the court the prosecutor's decision which had appeared a few days after the beginning of the current process; and it overruled the police document ascertaining the fake. The decision is a clear example of corruption in Russia: the text itself shows it was signed by an official who had not even read any relevant material.

As we described a few weeks ago, Nevsky Forest Park, located at 600 hectares in the upper Neva, appeared to be in the center of a scandal initiated by the entrepreneur Vardges Kazaryan – owner of the restaurant "Yakor" located in the area. Several years ago, the park was transferred to the Pokrovsky Fund for the gratuitous use, ostensibly to revive old church traditions. The Fund did buildt a church in the Nevsky Forest Park, and its status has been argued by St. Petersburg Diocese constantly. Why would a relatively small church need 600 hectares of forest? No one could explain. Instead, the Pokrovsky Fund made every effort to remove restaurant “Yakor” from the obtained territory. Thus Kazaryan and representatives of "the Pokrovsky" had a series of legal disputes. During the trials in was found out that "the Pokrovsky” received the Nevsky Forest Park because its status had been changed: from the forest land it turned into a specially protected area. The change of the status entailed a change of the directorate supervising the park on behalf of the State: Rosimushchestvo replaced the structure of Ministry of Environment.

The then head of the Leningrad regional office in Rosimushchestvo Mikhail Blinov took advantage of the change of the status of the forest park, to transmit it to "the Pokrovsky”.

However, during the trial it was revealed that representatives of “the Pokrovsky” used false document ( page 1 and page 2 ) with Leningrad Executive Committee decision № 660 of 1972, which supposedly settled the boundaries of the monument “Manor of Bogoslovka" right in the area of those 600-hectares. In February 2010, an official of the Department for Combating Economic Crimes, Department of Internal Affairs in the Central district of St. Petersburg, senior lieutenant Boyko stated the fact ( page 1 and page 2 )the false documents had been applied, but a criminal case was dismissed due to expiry of the period of limitation under the Russian law.

On the basis of this document Vardges Kazarian turned to the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad region to revoke the changed status of the Nevsky Forest Park due to a new circumstance. Then, Russian officials have once again revealed their true colors: suddenly, the Acting Attorney of the Central District Popov revoked the decision by Economic Crimes Department Lieutenant Boyko, claiming it as premature.

Meanwhile, the study of "timely" prosecutorial document allows assuming that Mr. Popov had never been aware of the issue - apparently he had got an order on the phone. Such a conclusion can be drawn from at least two facts.

Firstly, in the process of the additional verification the prosecutor demanded from Economic Crime Department to append the responses to inquiries sent to the Central State Archives and the Arbitration Court, although those responses had been appended to the material already. This is stated in the text of the decree set aside by Prosecutor Popov. Secondly, the date of the order set aside was inserted later by hand in the prosecutor's text - it seems the manufacturer of this strange document was not aware when exactly officer Boyko had ruled the refusal to initiate criminal proceedings. That is, he had no material in front of him when he was supposed to study it.

It is typical that the prosecutor’s timely ruling was brought to the court by a representative of the Property Agency itself, its former leader, Mikhail Blinov, in his time kindly provided the Nevsky Forest Park to the Pokrovsky Fund. However, it looks like the negative decision of the judge was predetermined. In any case, before the announcement of the decision the judge even expressed sympathy for the businessman Kazaryan and explained her refusal to grant his claim with the formal aspect of the problem which was not in his favor; Kazarian was supposed to appeal the judicial decision based on a false document much earlier.

Curiously, the false solution by Leningrad Executive Committee in 1972 appears in another arbitration case related to this story; the hearing is scheduled for June 23. So, the story of land ambitions of Ms. Sovershaeva’s Fund does not end there.

Natalia Gladysheva, RUMAFIA.COM

This is the resolution by Prosecutor Popov which was hastily brought to the court: