5.  The applicant was born in 1968 and lives in Riga.
6.  In 1940, in the territory of Latvia the totalitarian communist regime carried out large-scale nationalisation of privately owned property (for more information see Liepājnieks v. Latvia (dec.), no. 37586/06, § 49, 2 November 2010 and case-law cited therein), including a property consisting of a plot of land and buildings in Jurmala which had belonged to a private person M.G.
7.  After the regaining of independence, in 1991 property reform legislation came into force in Latvia and provided that former owners or their heirs could reclaim nationalised property by submitting a request to the local municipality by 1 June 1994. If such a request was not submitted within the statutory time-limit, a court had to decide on restoring property rights, provided a court claim had been submitted before 1 June 1999.
8.  In 1995 V.P.E., acting as a heir of M.G., instituted such proceedings regarding the property in question in the Jurmala City Court. She did not attend the court hearings and in 1997 the court decided to leave her claim without examination.
9.  In 1998 the Jurmala Municipality Land Commission divided the property into two plots on the grounds that no one had requested the restoration of property rights to the land previously owned by M.G.
10. On 19 July 2000 the Cabinet of Ministers issued Order No. 349, which retained one of the plots (hereinafter “the contested property”) as State property, transferred it to the Ministry of Finance, and obliged the Ministry to register it in the land register (see paragraph 41 below). Two days later the Order was published in the official gazette and in December that year the Ministry of Finance, represented by the State joint‑stock company the State Real Estate Agency (Valsts nekustamā īpašuma aģentūra), took it over from Jurmala Municipality.
11.  On 20 December 2000 V.P.E. instituted proceedings in the Jurmala City Court, with Jurmala Municipality as the defendant. She requested the restoration of her property rights to the whole nationalised real estate.
12.  On 2 February 2001 the Jurmala City Court ruled in favour of V.P.E. During the court hearing a representative of Jurmala Municipality supported the claim and confirmed that the property was not the subject of any dispute.
The judgment established that V.P.E. was a legitimate heir of the former owner M.G. The Jurmala City Court further held that V.P.E. had on 10 May 1994 submitted a request to Jurmala Municipality, within the time‑limit set down in the law, and had later, on 5 July 1995, turned to the court in an attempt to have her rights to the property restored. However, she had not completed the process owing to ill health. Lastly, the judgment stated that the property in question was not possessed by any physical persons in good faith (labticīgas fiziskas personas) and thus there were no obstacles to returning the real estate to V.P.E. The judgment was not appealed against and became final on 29 February 2001.
13.  At the time the judgment was adopted the Ministry of Finance had not been registered as the owner of the contested property (see paragraph 10 above). On the basis of the above judgment, on 14 May and 17 May 2001 V.P.E. was registered in the land register as the owner of both plots of land. On 21 and 22 May 2001 she sold the contested property to the applicant for 39,000 Latvian lati (LVL) (about 56,000 euros (EUR)). On 22 and 24 May 2001 the applicant was registered as the owner of the property in the land register. In 2001 and 2002 the applicant paid real estate tax on the property.
14.  Meanwhile, on 21 March 2001 the State Real Estate Agency informed the Prosecutor General that, in its opinion, the judgment of 2 February 2001 had infringed the interests of the State and was unlawful.
15.  On 1 June 2001 the Prosecutor General submitted an appeal (“protests”) to the Senate of the Supreme Court, asking for the Jurmala City Court judgment of 2 February 2001 to be quashed. The objection was based on the grounds that the Jurmala City Court had wrongly applied the land reform legislation, that it had not been competent to hear the case and that it had not taken into consideration the important evidence of Order No. 349, by which the State had become entitled to the contested property.
16.  On 1 August 2001, the Senate of the Supreme Court upheld the Prosecutor General’s objection, quashed the judgment of the Jurmala City Court and ordered a new adjudication of the case. The Senate agreed in substance with the Prosecutor General’s assessment that the Jurmala City Court had erred in choosing the applicable substantive law and that it had overstepped the limits of its competence. Most importantly, Jurmala Municipality had failed to inform the Jurmala City Court about evidence that was pertinent to the restoration of V.P.E.’s property rights.
17.  On 11 January 2002 the Ministry of Finance brought a property claim with Riga Regional Court, acting as a first-instance court, against the applicant and V.P.E. as defendants and Jurmala Municipality as a third party. The claimant asked that the purchase agreement signed by the defendants be declared null and void ab initio, and that the rights of the State to the contested property be recognised.
18.  The claim was based on the sections of the Civil Law regulating property claims.
19.  The Riga Regional Court subsequently decided to join to the above civil proceedings V.P.E.’s claim against Jurmala Municipality for the restoration of her rights to the contested property.
20.  On 16 September 2002 the Riga Regional Court examined the joined claims of V.P.E. and the Ministry of Finance. During the hearing a representative of Jurmala Municipality testified that V.P.E. had failed to request her property rights within the time-limits set by the property reform legislation. The applicant argued that he had been utterly convinced that the property had belonged to V.P.E. when he had purchased it and that he should enjoy protection as a bona fide acquirer of the property.
21.  Relying on Order No. 349 (see paragraph 41 below), the Riga Regional Court recognised that the State had acquired the contested property in 2000.
22.  In an appeal to the Supreme Court, the applicant submitted that the first-instance court ought to have ordered V.P.E. to return him an amount equal to the value of the contested property.
23.  During the hearing, a representative of Jurmala Municipality supported V.P.E.’s claim to the land, but not the buildings. They had allegedly already been transferred to the State.
24.  The Supreme Court, in a judgment of 9 January 2003, dismissed the appeal, holding, inter alia, that it could not be considered that the applicant had acquired the contested land in good faith. In reaching that conclusion the Supreme Court found that the Jurmala City Court’s judgment had been declared unlawful and had been quashed and that therefore any deed concluded with respect to unlawfully acquired property could not be lawful. The appellate court otherwise essentially agreed with the conclusions of the first-instance court.
25.  On 2 April 2003 the Senate of the Supreme Court adopted a judgment in which it dismissed an appeal on points of law by V.P.E. and so the decision to refuse the restoration of her property rights became final. With the same judgment the Senate allowed an appeal on points of law by the applicant. The Senate agreed that the appellate court had erred in considering that the contracts concluded between the applicant and V.P.E. had been invalid. The Senate further indicated that the appellate court had failed to adequately substantiate its finding that the State rather than the applicant was to be declared the owner of the contested property. The quashed part of the judgment was remitted to the appellate court.
26.  On 12 November 2003 the Supreme Court again decided to annul the purchase contracts concluded between V.P.E. and the applicant, to annul the registration of V.P.E.’s and the applicant’s property rights in the land register, and to recognise the State’s property rights. The court’s reasoning was based on section 2006 of the Civil Law, which provides that a purchase contract is to be declared null and void if, inter alia, none of the parties was aware that alienation of the property in question was not permitted.
27.  On the basis of the above judgment, on 27 January 2004 a judge of the land register recorded changes with regard to the contested property. The Ministry of Finance was registered as its owner and from that date onwards it paid the land tax.
28.  After the applicant submitted an appeal on points of law, the Senate of the Supreme Court on 3 March 2004 quashed the Supreme Court’s judgment of 12 November 2003 and remitted the case to that court. The Senate noted, inter alia, that the appellate court had ignored the applicant’s argument that it was necessary to decide on a reversal of the execution of the judgment of the Jurmala City Court.
29.  On 1 December 2004 the Supreme Court adopted a new judgment following the remittal. It upheld the Ministry of Finance’s application to recognise the State’s ownership rights over the contested property and to delete the entry in the Jurmala land register on the applicant’s title.
The Supreme Court noted that the applicant had obtained the property unlawfully (prettiesiski) because the Jurmala City Court had exceeded the limits of its competence when adopting the judgment of 2 February 2001. The Ministry of Finance, being the lawful owner of the contested property, could file a property claim against any person who had taken possession of its property. However, the claimant could not seek to annul a contract to which it was not a party and therefore the Ministry’s claim in relation to that was dismissed. The Supreme Court considered that in those circumstances there was no need to address the applicant’s arguments concerning the alleged need to rule on reversing the execution of the Jurmala City Court’s judgment.
30.  In his appeal on points of law, the applicant asked, inter alia, to have the deletion of the entries in the land register revoked. In particular, he referred to the fact that he had relied on land register data and had been a bona fide purchaser. Accordingly, he argued that instead of depriving him of the property, the court should have ordered V.P.E. to compensate the Ministry of Finance for the value of the contested property.
31.  On 23 March 2005 the Senate of the Supreme Court adopted a final judgment in which it dismissed the applicant’s appeal on points of law.
32.  On 25 August 2005 a land register judge rectified the data and entered the judgment of 23 March 2005 as the basis of the Ministry of Finance’s title to the contested property.
33.  The land register shows that the contested property is leased under an agreement dated 24 August 2005 by a private company which provides restaurant and catering services there. On 29 September 2006 the lease rights were entered in the land register. The long-term lease is valid until 31 August 2030.