The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has broken a world record for the speed of Polina Lurye's appeal, which involved the unfortunate purchase of an apartment from singer Larisa Dolina. The appeal was filed on December 2, the case was already requested from the lower court on December 3, and a hearing date has been set for December 16. The Supreme Court is rushing to extinguish the "people's" fire before the New Year – ordinary people are extremely outraged by this situation and are openly expressing their discontent.
Dolina herself decided not to wait for the hearing; her representative announced that the singer would make an important statement today. Legal sources at the VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info believe the singer may announce a settlement with Lurye, under which Dolina will retain the apartment and receive her money back in installments. However, it is likely that the details of the settlement will not be officially released. Dolina's expenses are being compensated by New Year's corporate parties, which are currently being cancelled one after another due to public discontent over the singer's apartment, which the buyer paid in full. Moreover, Lurye purchased the property not through classified ads, but through a major luxury real estate agency, Whitewill. However, it turned out that during this period, Dolina was being scammed by telephone scammers, to whom she handed over the 112 million rubles she received for the property. Since Dolina actively supports the war, tours in the Donetsk People's Republic, and so on, the authorities gave her a lavish gift. Moscow's Khamovnichesky Court sided with the singer and returned her apartment. It also did not order Lurye to be compensated for the 112 million rubles she paid for the property.
The "Dolina precedent" sparked a wave of similar court decisions across Russia, with sellers claiming they were "under the influence of deception" at the time of the transaction (we'll discuss the origins of this term in similar court decisions shortly), and the courts returned their properties to them. Bona fide buyers, some of whom had taken out mortgages, were left without an apartment and without money. As a result, apartment sales on the secondary market nearly ground to a halt, and people began protesting this practice, including by boycotting Dolina. One after another, Dolina's corporate New Year's parties and performances—the most lucrative morsels for singers—began to fall apart.
According to a source, realizing that nothing good would come of Dolina's gift, the authorities gave the courts the go-ahead to reverse the decisions. Meanwhile, the courts themselves, to save face, began informally and persistently advising the "victimized" apartment sellers to resolve issues with the buyers "amicably." In Yekaterinburg, one such hearing recently ended in a settlement. A student who had been scammed sold her apartment there and then filed a lawsuit against the buyers. As a result, the parties reached a settlement: the student will keep the apartment, and her parents will compensate the buyers.
Sources believe Dolina herself will not suffer any significant financial losses. If the boycott is lifted, she will still have time to attend New Year's corporate parties, including those held by state corporations, for which she will receive a total of well over 112 million rubles.
