The purchase of real estate for the purpose of developing a profitable business in Cotiujenii Mari village of Șoldănești district for Ana Cernopolc resulted in an interminable dispute. The women’s lawyer Andrei Bazatin said that after buying the building, the new owner established that this was leased out verbally to a limited liability company. The latter refuses to free the building even if the lease expired in December 2021. Moreover, the lessee filed a lawsuit in order to delay the process of freeing the building that belongs to Ana Cernopolc. Such situations are also due to legislative shortcomings that need to be corrected during the justice sector reform.
In a news conference staged by IPN, lawyer Andrei Bazatin said that on October 15, 2021 Ana Cernopolc purchased a compound consisting of a building and a lot. This is situated in Cotiujenii Mari village of Șoldănești district. To purchase this real estate, the woman sold her apartment in Chisinau, which she bought with money earned by her husband while working abroad. The move resulted in an interminable dispute. After Ana Cernopolc signed the sale and purchase agreement and had her ownership right recorded in the Real Estate Register, she learned that the building has been used by an Ltd controlled by a local businessman, Gheorghe Cojocari, who signed a lease with the former owner of the building.
To have the lessee evicted from her building, Ana Cernopolc asked for the assistance of the local public administration and the police. But Cojocari refuses to free the building. On October 25, 2021, the latter filed a civil lawsuit against Ana Cernopolc so as to delay the process of freeing the building and of continuing work there. Gheorghe Cojocari demands to recognize his right of ownership over the building and to annul the selling of this to Ana Cernopolc. A verbal agreement between Cojocari and the former owner is the main argument on which the lawsuit is based. The lease signed by the two expired on Decembers 31, 2021 and could have been extended tacitly. To avoid such an extension, Ana Cernopolc on November 14, 2021 informed Cojocari, through the agency of a bailiff, that the lease was to expire on December 31, 2021 and gave this time for freeing the building. However, Cojocari refuses to leave the building.
The lawsuit filed by Gheorghe Cojocari is examined by judge Elvira Lavchuk of the Șoldănești branch of the Orhei Court. “Evidently, the verbal agreement invoked by Cojocari cannot serve as a reason for recognizing his ownership right. This is actually not even important as the goal of the lawsuit is to delay the eviction and to continue using the building for commercial purposes. The representative of Mister Cojocari, in the presence of witnesses, admitted that their procedural tactic was to delay the examination of the case,” said the lawyer.
At Cojocari’s request, the court banned the owner from forcing the lessee to leave the building. As the hearings were put off, Ana Cernopolc in March 2022, having made use of all the preliminary methods, filed a lawsuit for having Cojocari evicted from her building. But the Șoldănești branch of the Orhei Court, at Cojocari’s request, suspended the examination of this lawsuit until the settlement of the suit brought by Cojocari.
On March 23, Ana Cernopolc filed a complaint against the illegal actions of Cojocari to the Șoldănești Prosecutor’s Office. The institution started a criminal case but hasn’t taken any action to investigate this case so far yet. Such situations derive from legislative gaps that should be dealt with during the justice sector reform, noted the lawyer.
The conference forms part of the series of conferences held as part of IPN News Agency’s project “Support for the Justice Reform through multimedia coverage of cases of alleged injustice”. The Agency does not bear responsibility for the public statements made in the public sphere by the organizers of news conferences. IPN News Agency gives the right of reply to persons who consider they were touched by the news items produced based on statements of the organizers of the given news conference, including by facilitating the organization of another news conference in similar conditions.
