In September 1996, the department signed a deal with Russian oil company, Evikhon, through which the company obtained a 49-year lease for Sosnovka-1 and Sosnovka-3.
Evikhon subsequently sold its tenant's rights to state company VPK Invest, which in February 2003 received authorization from the property department to sell the dachas.
Sosnovka-3 was sold to Veltex, which is part owned by Mikhail Fridman, the head of Alfa Group, one of Russia's largest industrial and financial conglomerates. The Sosnovka-1 plot was sold to another company, Amelia, which re-sold it to ex-premier Mikhail Kasyanov.
On January 17, 2006, the Moscow Arbitration Court invalidated the sale of the Sosnovka-3 plot, returned it to state property and ordered that Veltex, the company that bought the land, be repaid 10.1 million rubles ($360,000).
On February 2, the court also invalidated the sale of Sosnovka-1 to Kasyanov but he was not deprived of the plot.
Sosnovka-1 stretches over 11.5 hectares on the Moskva River, near the capital, with a private beach. In Soviet times, the land was home to the second secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee, Mikhail Suslov.
Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn lives at nearby Sosnovka-2.
