CASE OF ANNA POPOVA v. RUSSIA
Remainder inadmissible;Violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 - Protection of property (Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1 - Deprivation of property;Peaceful enjoyment of possessions);Non-pecuniary damage - award (Article 41 - Non-pecuniary damage;Just satisfaction)
Alena Poláčková;Branko Lubarda;Dmitry Dedov;Georgios A. Serghides;Helen Keller;Helena Jäderblom;Luis López Guerra
5. The applicant was born in 1964 and lives in Chelyabinsk. 6. In 1971 a local factory, which was the owner of a block of flats, assigned the flat at 125-56 Ulitsa Kommuny, Chelyabinsk, to P. under a social housing agreement. In 1992 the title to the building was transferred to Chelyabinsk Municipality. P. resided in the flat as a tenant until his death on 3 December 2010. 7. Following P.’s death, Chelyabinsk Municipality started the process for registering the flat as vacant in order to assign it to another person eligible for social housing. However, it turned out that, according to the documents, the flat was no longer municipal property and that it belonged to L. The federal registration service sent the relevant data to the head of the municipality’s administration on 16 February 2011. The head of the administration asked the regional prosecutor to look into the situation with the flat. 8. The prosecutor established that the flat had been subject to a number of transactions. According to the relevant documents, on 9 November 1992 the factory had signed a privatisation agreement to transfer the flat to Kh. On 3 December 1992 the transaction was registered by the registration service. On 25 January 2011 Kh. sold the flat to L., who sold it on 21 April 2011 to Ya. Those transactions were also registered by the registration service. 9. A police investigator questioned Kh., who denied having anything to do with the flat. As regards his passport details indicated in the privatisation agreement, he explained that in 2009 and 2010 he had lost his passport twice and that he had never met P. or L. The police further established that L., who was serving in the army at the time, had also lost his passport in 2009. 10. On 31 March 2011 the prosecutor responded to the head of the administration advising him as follows: “It appears that the persons who were parties to the transactions with the flat committed a crime in this respect. Accordingly the materials have been forwarded to the [police] for further inquiry ... . [The police] will inform you of the results of the inquiry ... . Furthermore, in order to prevent further transactions with the flat, I have asked the Chief State Registrar to refuse state registration of any future transactions with the flat.” 11. On an unspecified date the police opened a criminal investigation into the transactions involving the flat. 12. On 22 June 2011 Ya. sold the flat to the applicant. 13. On 30 June 2011, acting on behalf of the municipality, the prosecutor brought an action against Kh., L. and Ya. to seek repossession of the flat and the annulment of all transactions executed in respect of it. The prosecutor argued that Kh., had never resided in the flat and that the flat had never been transferred to him from the municipality under a privatisation scheme. The prosecutor asked the court to invalidate the privatisation agreement of 9 November 1992 and subsequent transactions in respect of the flat as having no basis in law. The Tsentralniy District Court of Chelyabinsk fixed a hearing for 1 September 2011. 14. On 6 July 2011 the registration service issued a certificate confirming the purchase of the flat by the applicant and her title to it. 15. On 16 September 2011 the District Court granted the applicant’s request and allowed her to take part in the proceedings initiated by the prosecutor. She claimed that she had bought the flat in good faith and that the municipality could not recover it from her. 16. On 5 October 2011 the District Court issued an injunction against the registration of any transactions involving the flat. 17. On 23 December 2011 the Tsentralniy District Court of Chelyabinsk granted the prosecutor’s claims brought on behalf of the municipality. The applicant’s title to the flat was annulled and transferred to the municipality. The court also ordered the applicant’s eviction. Lastly, it ruled that Ya. should return to the applicant the sum she had paid for the flat. The court reasoned as follows: “Pursuant to Article 302 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, if a property has been purchased from a person who had no right to sell it, and the purchaser is unaware and could not have been aware [of that fact] (the bona fide purchaser), the owner shall have the right to reclaim that property from the purchaser, if the said property was lost by the owner or by the person into whose possession the owner has conveyed the property, or if it was stolen from either of them, or if it left their possession against their will in another way. It has been established in the course of the proceedings that the flat in question left the municipality’s possession against the latter’s will. Accordingly, the flat ... should be recovered from [the applicant] and transferred to the municipality.” 18. On 5 March 2012 the Chelyabinsk Regional Court upheld the judgment of 23 December 2011 on appeal. The court also noted that the applicant could not be recognised as a bona fide purchaser given that she had known that the flat had been resold three times within five months. 19. On 13 December 2013 Ya. died. The part of the judgment of 23 December 2011 concerning the monetary award in the applicant’s favour remains unenforced. 20. According to the Government, the applicant has not been evicted and continues to reside in the flat. 21. On an unspecified date the applicant brought an action against the State, alleging that the local authorities’ inaction had resulted in her buying a flat from a person who had no right to sell it to her. 22. On 19 December 2013 the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow dismissed the applicant’s claims. 23. On 16 June 2014 the Moscow City Court upheld the judgment of 19 December 2013 on appeal.