Business news from Ukraine

COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF DENMARK’S BIIR IN DISPUTE OVER RIGHTS TO OFFICE BUILDING IN ODESA

3 March , 2018  

Odesa’s business court of appeals has ruled in favor of BIIR Property LLC (Odesa), a subsidiary of Denmark’s engineering company BIIR, in dispute with Megas-Bud LLC over the ownership right to the building of an office located at 3B, Prymorska Street in Odesa. “The uniqueness of the lawsuit is that we won it in Odessa. In my country this lawsuit would not have existed at all, and here we were fighting not only with the organization that tried to take away the building from us, but also with representatives of the National Police and Prosecutor’s Office who, in our opinion, violated the law. We will continue to insist on the lawsuit until we find an acceptable solution,” the head of the company, Thomas Sillesen, said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.
He said that BIIR Property appealed to the prosecutor’s office about violations by officials of the National Police and the prosecutor’s office. According to the register of court rulings, Megas-Bud LLC lost ownership right to the administrative building located at 3B, Prymorska Street in Odesa as a result of non-payment of a mortgage loan of $950,000. Due to the transfer of the ownership right to the building from one bank to another and signing the sale and purchase contract, Prime Odesa LLC became its owner, from which BIIR Property acquired the facility in March 2017.
However, according to the lawsuit, Megas Bud LLC decided to file a claim to court, referring to the fact that Prime Odesa took possession of the building by fraud.
BIIR lawyer Oleksiy Lebedev said that the business court brought in the company as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, and also decided to arrest the building, which, according to BIIR, was unreasonable and unlawful. In addition, the arrest was also imposed on the building in criminal proceedings. According to the lawyer, the business court decided to invalidate the transaction, according to which Prime Odesa purchased the building, and remove it from BIIR. The court of appeal, when re-hearing the lawsuit, declared the building as the property of BIIR.
“We appealed to the Supreme Council of Justice with complaints about the judges who unlawfully seized the building. The head of the High Council of Justice personally became interested in this lawsuit,” Sillesen said. According to him, the company began operations in Odesa in 2014, after the forced relocation from Luhansk. The staff is about 100 people, but the company plans its expansion up to 500 people in the next three or four years, which was the reason for buying a building in Odesa.
BIIR (Aarhus, Denmark) was founded in 2008. It provides services for the designing and development of projects of “lean” engineering, in particular, wind power plants. OOO BIIR Property (Odesa) is engaged in the rental of real estate. The owner of the LLC is the Danish J.I.T LLC with the charter capital is UAH 13.5 million.
Megas-Bud LLC was registered in 2007. According to the public register, its co-owner (50%) is ex-deputy of the Odesa City Council Valentyn Skoblenko. The core business of the LLC is construction of buildings. The charter capital of the enterprise is UAH 900,000.