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The agent was unfastened from the ground
Mikhail Gutseriev's major developer, A101 Group, has contested claims for 19 billion rubles in three courts. The company, Dzherand, is little known on the market. Opponents demanded payment of this amount for cadastral services for transferring the former Kommunarka breeding farm in New Moscow from one category to another. Lawyers do not rule out that the agreement between the partners was informal, which is why the plaintiff lost the case.
On October 17, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region did not satisfy the claim of OOO Dzherand to recover 19 billion rubles. From AO Progress, part of the A101 Group of Companies. Thus, the case supported the decision of the court of first instance and the appeal.
The dispute between the two parties resumed in March 2023. According to the case materials, Dzherand demanded that Progress JSC compensate for losses incurred due to the developer's failure to comply with the terms of the agency agreement, which, according to the company, was implemented in 2018-2021. The plaintiff provided services for registering clients' rights to land and received 50% of these assets as remuneration from the developer. In particular, we are talking about 875 hectares under the former Kommunarka breeding farm in New Moscow. Dzherand LLC and the A101 group did not respond to Kommersant's inquiries.
According to SPARK, little is known about OOO Dzherand, except that its founder is Andrey Gerasimov. Market participants do not have information about projects and assets in the real estate sector.
Lawyers interviewed by Kommersant called the dispute between A101 Structures and Dzherand unusual. For example, according to the Propositum law firm, the methods of payment for cadastral services are atypical. Perhaps, says Vladimir Khantimirov, managing partner of the Asterisk law firm, the landowners have encountered major difficulties with registration, which means that the possibilities for developing the disputed land are limited.
Usually in such a situation, the counterparty responsible for resolving the difficulties is included in the developer's authorized capital, but in this situation, "the construction company decided to conclude only an agency agreement regarding trust management," the expert said.
Therefore, Mr. Khantimirov has now come to the conclusion that it will be difficult for Dzherand LLC to prove in court the validity of the officially rendered services.
Calculation of claims for the amount of 19 billion rubles. The question arises: there is a clear imbalance between the market value of land rights registration services and the declared fees, says Dmitry Bogdanov, a consultant in the real estate and construction practice at Seamless Legal. According to Vladimir Khantimirov, official legal services cannot cost "billions of rubles."
The 26th Inspector General of the Federal Tax Service for Moscow, who is a third party in the dispute, said that Dzherand does not have the financial and property capacity to enter into a deal that would create debt obligations in the amount of 19 billion rubles. The financial position of the plaintiff is often irrelevant in determining whether she has suffered a loss, says Olga Karpova, a lawyer at the law firm Olga Renova and Partners.
Pavel Zhelnovod, a partner at the law firm Nova Inc, doubts that the plaintiffs will be able to prove their rights in the Supreme Court, since the lower courts saw no evidence that the agents had ensured compliance with their contracts. The lawyer does not rule out that the agreement between the opposing parties was concluded at a conceptual level, in which case it will be difficult to translate it to a legal level.