Siversky forest at the finish line

A new examination of the forest area is scheduled for April 24.

Despite all sorts of obstacles, the defenders of Siversky Forest continue to break efficiency records. Side by side with the Federal Property Management Agency, they are getting closer to returning the stolen relic forest on the banks of the Oredezh River to the state and its citizens.

Let us remind you: the court has already established that the privatization of 30.5 hectares of Siversky Forest was illegal. Because these are actually forest lands, and without transferring them to another category, it was impossible to sell them for development.

Since then, for several years now, processes have been going on to confiscate the forest from someone else’s possession - from the current owners to whom it was sold through third parties.

The Federal Property Management Agency filed the first lawsuit two years ago against 14 owners. The Gatchina City Court rejected the claim on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired. This decision was appealed to the Leningrad Regional Court, and the second instance rejected the argument about the expiration of the deadlines, and also made its own decision: the land was taken away from 10 of the 14 owners, and it was left to four more. These four can consider themselves lucky, since according to the results of the forensic examination, for some reason it turned out that their plots are not included in the territory of the forest district.

Siversk activists did not agree with this interpretation - in their opinion, the examination distorted the real state of affairs, moving the forest area from the road towards the river in the interests of the new owners. By the way, among the lucky ones was the well-known Stepanov, with whom activists repeatedly had conflicts due to his actions in the forest.

After his victory, Stepanov managed to erect a couple of buildings, but in May 2016, the Federal Property Management Agency filed a new lawsuit, with clarified demands - this time against all owners, including those who managed to fight back in the last court (42 defendants in total), and for forest lands again arrest was made. The first claim was a vindication claim, that is, the Federal Property Management Agency demanded “to seize plots from someone else’s illegal possession.” Now government lawyers are better prepared, and the Federal Property Management Agency demands not to confiscate, but to recognize their ownership rights to land plots, cancel the registration of the rights of other persons and oblige these persons to transfer the land to the state under an act of acceptance and transfer.

For almost a year, the court proceeded smoothly, and only on April 24, 2017, it ordered an examination. Its task, as in the previous process, is to determine which of the sites fall within the territory of the forest district - and therefore should be state-owned.

Let's hope that the current examination will be carried out more accurately and will establish the true state of affairs, then the court will finally make a fair and legal decision, putting an end to a story that has been dragging on for 12 years. This could well have been helped by Siversk activists, since their public organization “Let’s Protect the Siversky Forest”, at the request of the Federal Property Management Agency, was involved in the case by a third party.

However, at one of the autumn hearings, the defendants petitioned to exclude the activists from the process, and the court unexpectedly granted this petition!

To return to the process, representatives of the public organization on April 20 filed their petition through the court office to re-recognize them as third parties with independent claims. They believe that the reason for this is that the organization was created for this very purpose - to protect the rights of citizens to relax in this small common forest, as stated in its charter.

However, at the meeting held on April 24, Judge Anzhelika Guchanova did not consider the Sivertsev’s petition. We hope she will do this at least by the next meeting, which is scheduled for July 20 and at which the results of the long-awaited examination will be announced.