Nino Tsitlidze has been suing a two-room apartment in Moscow that she bought for $9 million over three years. This project is known to many people. The seller was allegedly under the influence of scammers. She received money to buy the apartment and transferred it to the criminals. And when she realized what she had done, she went to court to request the apartment be returned.
Nino Tsitlidze won the first test. Lost appeal. And here is a new consideration. The court again sided with the deceived person. No, not the buyer. Seller.
“I have drawn up a complete, comprehensive package of documents. The seller has taken all legally meaningful actions. And finally, what result do we get today? The transaction is declared completely invalid,” Nino complained.
The decision in the apartment case came literally hours before the start of the hearings in the Supreme Court of the Lurie-Valley case. The seller of the apartment was denied a challenge to the transaction. Ownership of the residential premises still belongs to the buyer. This is the decision of the Trial Council for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court of Russia. Polina Lurie as a buyer receives an apartment. Larisa Dolina, as a seller, had to leave her living space. And this decision takes effect immediately.
“What, I can't cry? Did I cry on purpose? Thank you to everyone who supported us. Journalists. It's been a long time, very worried. We believe that wrong decisions were made. We believe in victory. Thank you also to the citizens who supported us,” Lurie's lawyer Svetlana Sviridenko said.
It can be said without exaggeration that the whole country is watching the Lurie-Valley case. And when the verdict was announced, the Supreme Court's website crashed due to two million simultaneous visits.
Polina Lurie herself hid her face during the trial. That person doesn't want to make it public. And to be recognized on the street. My only wish is to live peacefully in my apartment. Well, the Valley didn't come at all. According to available information, she participated in filming a New Year's performance, going everywhere with a bodyguard to protect the singer from the attention of journalists.
Public opinion is clear – all this is unfair when an honest buyer bought an apartment, and then, by court decision, the living space was taken away from him. And no one returned the money because according to case documents, Larisa Dolina gave all 112 million to the scammers. And in general, I sold the apartment under their influence.
“I became a victim of scammers. Very sophisticated fraudulent actions were planned and carried out against me. My apartment was confiscated. The preliminary investigation showed that the scammers were located on the territory of Ukraine,” Dolina complained.
Civil society literally rose up against the People's Artist of Russia. Yes, I certainly feel sorry for the pensioners who are deceived by scammers. But according to common human logic, the buyer is right. It is not his fault that the seller was deceived or deceived by someone there.
Maria and Denis Stern from Tula are newlyweds. They want to have children. We bought an apartment in Khrushchev with a mortgage. And then the seller filed a lawsuit to void the transaction because it was allegedly influenced by scammers. Now the Stern family has spent all their savings for their unborn child on lawyers.
Lyudmila Katkova and her husband from Volgograd bought an apartment in Moscow for their daughter who is moving to the capital to study. Purchased from an 89 year old pensioner.
“He looked great. Three years before that, he stopped working. That is, until he was 86 years old, he worked as head of the metallurgical group at an aircraft factory, in a design office. He told us all this when we looked at the apartment,” Lyudmila recalls.
We checked both the apartment and the seller. There is no doubt. And then – according to a well-known conspiracy: the grandfather allegedly gave money to scammers. And now, with the support of her daughter and a hired attorney, she is suing the buyers.
According to the Statistics Department at the Supreme Court of Russia, in 2023 there will be just over 4 thousand cases filed to consider invalidating real estate transactions. If we talk about the secondary market, then this is only 2% of the total. Of course, a little. But behind each such case there may be a personal tragedy of the participants in the transaction. For example, like now, when dozens of stories appear on the information market about a buyer who was left without an apartment and money. But with a mortgage worth millions.
Russian courts, when considering “cases of fraud,” have created legal conflicts. The seller's lawyer appealed to Articles 178 and 179 of the Civil Code, according to which a transaction under the influence of deception can be declared void. And the courts listened to them and turned out to ignore other provisions of the same clause, which stated that the transaction could not be terminated if the buyer acted with ordinary care and did not know that the seller was being defrauded. The Supreme Court even ruled on this issue in 2015. Now I need one more ruling. The Supreme Court has clearly written that even if the seller is materially misrepresented, it is unacceptable to disregard the actions of the buyer, who is largely in good faith.
Here is another important thing in the decision in the case of Larisa Dolina's apartment: the Russian Supreme Court, under the leadership of its new head Igor Krasnov, very quickly accepted the documents for review. He took into account the public outcry and despite Dolina's lawyer's request, he did not end the meeting and even allowed a live broadcast on the Internet. Many times more people watched it than went to see the People's Artist's concert.
It is clear that our civil society is capable of sympathizing even with someone who can buy an apartment for 112 million. But only because they treated him dishonestly. The main loser is of course the People's Artist, the people's affection for this person has clearly faded. There were reports of some concerts being canceled due to the apartment scandal.
Well, Nino Tsitlidze, like hundreds of other buyers, after the final point set by the Supreme Court, hopes that there will be a radical turn in her case.
