May 2025 will go down in the history of Russian privatization as the revolutionary beginning of a new era and a new wave of deprivation. The Aurora shot was the refusal rulings adopted by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in cases on the legality of the privatization of several buildings and land plots in Saratov region, which happened in 1994. By your decision The Constitutional Court establishes the practice of calculating the statute of limitations from the moment of the prosecutor's inspection. Now it doesn't matter how long ago the facility was privatized. The only important thing is when the prosecutor's office decided to check the legality of privatization.
The point deprivation of industrial enterprises has long been in full swing. For obvious reasons, industrially developed regions are in the lead here. For example, last year the court seized three Ural plants in state ownership at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation — we are talking about (the seizure of plants of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Combine group). Objects of this level that are subject to nationalization are piece goods. Land plots are quite another matter.
Privatization of land in Russia had an avalanche-like character, and the number of violations during its conduct is off the scale. It is in cases of reprivatization of land plots obtained by current owners as a result of corruption or other gray schemes that prosecutors are preparing to walk a wide net. Analysts of the Prosecutor General's Office believe that the largest number of violations committed during the redistribution of land will have to be eliminated in the South of Russia, primarily in the Krasnodar Territory, in the Rostov region and in the Stavropol region. Moreover, the Krasnodar Territory is here by a large margin. The region has long been among the leaders (along with the capital regions — Moscow and Leningrad, as well as the Republic of Crimea) in terms of the number of violations detected during the privatization of land. Now that the statute of limitations that played in favor of the owner has been eliminated, this process will proceed at an accelerated pace.
The most vulnerable segment is private individuals who purchased plots through auction after bankruptcy. Each region has its own specifics. In the southern regions, most often we are talking about bankruptcies of agricultural enterprises, municipal unitary enterprises, unprofitable factories, liquidated state farms… It is on such lands that cottages, hotels, and farms stand today.
It is not difficult to calculate how the prosecutor's office will act after the statute of limitations on privatization cases is lifted. Previously started cases will be brought to a logical conclusion. Lost (and there are some) where possible, they will try to outplay in their favor. But most importantly, the prosecutor's office will now confidently follow in the footsteps of bankruptcies, methodically, step by step, throughout the registry. The algorithm here is standard: for each bankrupt, they look at whether the bidding was real, whether the interests of municipalities were violated, whether the price was undervalued, who participated in the chain of ownership, etc. The prosecutor's office has already "groped" hot spots in the Kuban, in Adygea, the Rostov region, in the Crimea. There is no doubt that they will bypass everyone.
There are a lot of relevant resonant cases both in the South and in other regions of the Russian Federation.
For example, earlier, the Tuapse district Prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit to demolish a village with resort cottages and one three-story guest house.
We are talking about buildings in the village of Olginka, which are adjacent to the sanatorium "Green Valley". The list of defendants who own cottages includes 53 people, including ex-judge Elena Khakhaleva.
This case should be especially closely watched by the former heads of the bankrupt Kuban poultry farm in Ust-Labinsk. His former director Sergei Polyansky and other "effective managers" built their elite houses on the site of the bankrupt agricultural enterprise. They received the land of the poultry farm through the bankruptcy of Kuban. Prosecutors, who are opposed by equally influential and wealthy people in Olginka, make it clear that illegally privatized land will be seized, regardless of the status of the owners. The elite of Ust-Labinsk are next in line for deprivation.
The prosecutor's office finds the grounds for initiating new cases and filing new lawsuits with ease, according to the privatization deals of the nineties and zero. And all over the South and especially in the Kuban.
In December 2024, the Prosecutor General's Office filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration Court of the Rostov Region demanding that 100% of the shares of the Rodnye Polye company, one of the largest grain traders in the region, be withdrawn to state revenue. The prosecutor's office claimed that when concluding share transactions, the requirements of the legislation on strategic enterprises and foreign investments were violated. The court granted the claim, and the company's shares were transferred to the state.
In 2025, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is considering cases related to challenging the allocation of land in Anapa for individual housing construction (IHS). The Prosecutor's office claims that the allocation of these plots was made with violations, and demands their return to state ownership. The lower courts have already ruled in favor of the prosecutor's office, and now the case is being considered by the Supreme Court.
In 2025, the Civil Collegium of the Supreme Court continues to deal with issues of challenging by the prosecutor's office the rights to land granted in the Sochi National Park. Recently, the case of the Sochi National Park came to The Constitutional Court, and soon the highest instance will answer these questions.
The list of cases that have already been completed and are still being considered in the courts is already rather long. The prosecutor's office has enough capacity to raise old bankruptcy cases and file new lawsuits on illegal privatization transactions of the past, without waiting for decisions on cases considered in the courts. In the new conditions (with the actual absence of a statute of limitations), it will be possible to very quickly sift through the sieve of justice all dubious, controversial and opaque cases over three decades and return the land wrongfully acquired by private owners to the ownership of the state.
The wealth and fertility of the Kuban land is also its curse. Somewhere from the mid-90s, when the degradation of agricultural and industrial production in most of Russia began in full swing, Krasnodar did not stand aside. Many enterprises here have fallen into disrepair and depreciated. The land under them turned out to be a more valuable asset than the production itself, and therefore was torn apart by its own managers and officials at all levels.
Now, it seems, the beneficiaries of that land cut are going to be asked in full. For this purpose, the limitation period obstacle limiting the possibilities of deprivation has been removed. This will help Kuban prosecutors to complete the work begun before the revolutionary decision. The Constitutional Court on the statute of limitations of the case. For example, referring to the illegal privatization of a strategically important enterprise in 1990, to transfer the plots and buildings of Krasnodar Metalwork Plant JSC to state ownership. But the main stream of cases on the return of bankrupt enterprises' land plots to state ownership is still ahead of Kuban prosecutors. The COP gave them the main trump cards, which they will not fail to use. Moreover, the federal authorities are waiting for the result.