An unexpected court decision has been made in the case of the notorious so-called castle in Stobnica on the edge of the Notecka Forest. The Oborniki court decided to discontinue criminal proceedings against three of the six defendants. They are the investor Pavel N., his son Dmitry N. and the chief designer Waldemar S. Only the officials are expected to sit on the defendant's bench.
This is another installment of the notorious and infamous investment in the Greater Stobnica area (Oborniki district), where a monumental building in the form of an eclectic castle is under construction. The investment began more than six years ago, and the media publicized it two years later - in 2018, pointing out that the structure is being built in a protected Natura 2000 area, partly in the current of a state-owned canal. The form and scale aroused widespread controversy and - mostly - criticism.
The matter was dealt with by the relevant services and authorities: the CBA and the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection, among others. The latter revoked in 2019 the environmental decision it had issued four years earlier. The case went to the prosecutor's office, which finally - in December 2020 - filed an indictment against six people - representatives of the investor, the designer and officials (for more details on the whole case: see our previous text on the so-called castle). The trial has not started to this day, and last Monday, June 6, the Oborniki District Court dropped the criminal proceedings against three people: representing the investor: Pavel N, and his son Dmitry N., and the chief designer, Poznan architect and Poznan University of Technology lecturer Waldemar S. True, the court did not negate that the investment had a harmful impact on the environment, but found that the defendants did not act intentionally.
Because the regulations were wrong
Recall: the investor's representatives were accused primarily of using unreliable data understating the area of the investment, which helped facilitate further official procedures. Waldemar S., on the other hand, signed a document that was said to contain incorrect surface area data. What led to the decision to discontinue the proceedings even before the trial began? As Gazeta Wyborcza reports, Judge Magdalena Barczyk found that the defendants did not intentionally act by certifying or using incorrect data. The errors in the documentation, she said, were supposedly due to difficulties in applying Polish laws and regulations. This is because, depending on their interpretation, the area of an investment can vary - according to the method of calculation adopted.
The judge also found that the investor had not committed two other crimes alleged by the prosecution. He was alleged to have failed to certify untruths by declaring that he owns all the land on which he is carrying out the investment (the land in question is under the authority of the Polish Water Authority), and he did not "damage the plants" as a result of the construction.
while the castle grows
The judge also ruled that the investors and the designer could not be held responsible for the decisions of officials from the Oborniki District Office, who should have looked more closely at the documentation. A trio of officials will therefore likely sit on the defendant's bench: Iwona P. - an inspector of building supervision in Oborniki, and Marek J. and Bernadeta G. from the Department of Architecture and Construction of the Oborniki District Starosty. But they too, at Monday's meeting, requested that the proceedings be dropped. However, the reaction of the Poznan prosecutor's office to yesterday's court decision is still unknown.
And what is happening with the work on the so-called castle? Construction of the fourteen-story structure standing on an artificial island with a tower several dozen meters high is progressing and is nearing completion. This is because in January this year, the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw overturned last year's decision of the GINB, which declared the construction permit issued in 2015 invalid. The investment can therefore continue to roll along until a final verdict is handed down on it (if the process begins at all).
