BIIR Property finally becomes the legal owner of purchased real estate

Complainee: The Main Department of the National Police in Odesa Oblast (National Police)
 
Complaint in brief: BIIR Property, a subsidiary of BIIR Danish engineering company approached the Council. Due to active criminal proceedings, the complainant could not become the legal owner of the recently purchased real estate. 
 
In order to expand business in Ukraine, in September 2019, the investor purchased a building in Odesa with an area of almost 2000 m2. The premises purchase agreement was concluded through “Prozorro” electronic bidding (procurement) system. In total, the building for the future office cost the company over UAH 9 mn. 
 
However, the complainant was unable to register his legitimate right to his own real estate. 
 
Actions taken: As the Council’s investigator found out, a part of the building (1/10) was arrested by the court after it had been purchased by the complainant. The reason for this was the appeal of citizen D. and, accordingly, criminal proceedings under the article “fraud” were initiated. According to the complainant, the criminal case had been opened absolutely groundlessly, and the information of citizen D. was untrue. According to the company, this indicated that the applicant had provided a deliberately false information to prevent the complainant from registering his ownership right of the acquired object. 
 
Indeed, six weeks later the arrest was lifted. However, criminal proceedings against the part of the building was ongoing. Therefore, at the beginning of 2020, the company’s lawyer turned to the National Police with a request to submit additional documents to the case file as evidence, as well as to conduct investigative actions, particularly questioning the citizen D. 
 
The BOC asked the Prosecutor’s Office in Odesa Oblast and the Main Department of the National Police in Odesa Oblast in writing to check the legality of the preliminary investigation. In particular, the investigator stressed the importance of compliance with the consideration terms of the attorney’s motion on investigative actions.
The Council brought up the company’s case for consideration at the meeting of the expert group set up pursuant to Memorandum of Cooperation between the BOC and the Prosecutor General’s Office.
 
Result achieved: In February 2020, the Prosecutor’s Office in Odesa Oblast rejected the complainant’s attorney’s petition, but instructed the investigator to intensify the pre-trial investigation. 
 
Investigation intensification brought the anticipated desired result – at the end of March 2020, the criminal proceedings were closed. The case was successfully resolved.