The purchase offer for the 84 hectares of land, which was accepted without a public sale, has raised questions about selling “under the counter”. The potential buyers are the daughters of the council representative.
Kaarina the city government decided in January to sell the forest owned by the municipality, i.e. the taxpayers.
Siblings living in the city Linda Lang and Laura Langh-Lagerlöf had made a purchase offer for the 84-hectare forest area.
The sisters belong to the Kaarina Langh family, whose Langh companies have become known, among other things, for their shipping company operations. The family already has around 350 hectares of forest in Kaarina.
The price of 560,000 euros offered by the sisters for the forest seemed like a fair price, according to the members of the city councils, because a forest assessment had been made for the site in 2020. According to the estimate at the time, the fair value of the site was only 330,174 euros.
The purchase offer the city received for its forest therefore exceeded the price estimate three years ago by nearly 230,000 euros.
Mayor of Kaarina Harri Virta (cit.), however, proposed to the city government that it reject the purchase offer it received. He justified the wreck presentation on the principle of the city’s land sale, according to which the object should be for public sale. At that time, all interested parties would have an equal opportunity to make an offer on the object.
The city council rejected Virtra’s proposal with clear votes and ended up in favor of selling.
The soup was ready.
Pair a week later, the Kaarina city council took up the matter in its turn. There, the forest trade blessed by the city government heated up emotions.
The largest party in Kaarina’s city government is the coalition, as is the city council. The city government is headed by a member of parliament Anne-Mari Virolainen (collect.).
The Langhi siblings, who made a purchase offer for Metsäala, are on the other hand the representative of the Kaarinas coalition By Hans Lang daughters. Laura Langh-Lagerlöf also sat on the lists of the coalition as a Kaarina city councilor in the last council term.
A hot question in the council became whether the coalition was scheming when deciding to sell a large area of land without a public sale to a family close to the coalition.
And was the forest area sold under the counter at an underpriced price?
Mayor Harri Virta says that he submitted the rejection of the Langhi siblings’ purchase offer due to both the city’s land sale principles and the right price to be obtained from the forest.
“The fact is that the price of wood has risen after 2020, and of course the forest will also grow during that time.”
According to Virra, the current price of the forest was not re-evaluated after receiving the purchase offer, because already in the basic proposal, the idea was that the object would end up in public sale through tendering.
Virta says that despite the fact that the city government decided against his basic proposal, in his view, there is no political favoritism of any kind involved.
“I don’t see any kind of conspiracy-mongering here. Now it just happens that the buyer is from the coalition. Yes, the Langhi family is a good forest owner, and in that sense, that forest would go to a good buyer.”
“This was a clear majority decision that was not twisted or contested. There is nothing unclear about this, at least as far as I know.”
The city government the sale decision has not yet gained legal force. It has also received two rectification claims, criticizing in particular the fact that the object was not sold through a public procedure.
According to Harri Virra, the aim is to continue processing the forest trade at the next city council meeting on March 6. Before that, Virra has to decide whether the basic motion is to reject the rectification claims and accept the deal or vice versa.
“We are trying to get a fresh estimate of the price of the forest. If it shows that the price of the purchase offer we received was correct, then there is nothing unclear and the decision is correct. But if there is a big gap in the price, then I will think differently.”
The original purchase offer of the Langhi siblings expired already last week.
“I have understood that it might still be possible to negotiate. I’m sure it’s not like I’m on the back of a hare right now.”
Kaarina’s forest sales disputes were reported earlier Kaarina magazine.
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