The court seized land from the elite Mayak village in Gelendzhik in favor of the state.

THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED AND DISTRIBUTED BY THE FOREIGN AGENT MEMO LLC, OR CONCERNING THE ACTIVITIES OF THE FOREIGN AGENT MEMO LLC.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," in June of last year, the Krasnodar Krai prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit to seize land under the Mayak cottage village in Gelendzhik in favor of the state. The agency demanded that the houses built there be recognized as illegal construction and demolished.

The court ordered the seizure of land plots in the Mayak village near Gelendzhik, owned by 20 individuals; the buildings built on these plots were recognized as unauthorized structures, but they were not to be demolished. There won't be any—the objects will become state property. Ten people, whom investigators believe to be the organizers of the Mayak project, have been ordered to pay approximately two billion rubles in damages for the removal of approximately 40 land plots from federal ownership. Another billion rubles has also been recovered for damage to soil, Kommersant reported on May 8.

Forty-nine individuals are defendants in the case, including the former head of Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Maxim Bondarenko.

Previously, the "Caucasian Knot" reported that residents of the Krasnodar Territory had repeatedly complained about what they considered unfounded attempts by the authorities to confiscate their land plots. In November 2024, the prosecutor's office demanded that 65 land plots from 54 residents of the Tuapse District be confiscated in favor of the state. According to the agency, the authorities sold these plots of land unjustifiably in the 2000s.

In October 2023, the Prosecutor General's Office filed a lawsuit against Sochi entrepreneurs and landowners seeking the confiscation of the land plots due to improper use. The court upheld the claim, depriving 74 defendants of their land plots.

The mass seizure of land plots is connected with the case of fraud with the lands of the Sochi National Park: 11,066 land plots were seized, including plots allocated by the authorities to large families, and then the courts began to massively deprive the owners of property rights to these lands, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "Sochi residents' struggle for land in the national park".

* Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.