Elderly Kyiv woman fights to save apartment

    Nina Shevchenko never thought that her own kindness might lead to homelessness.

     But living alone in a two-room apartment in downtown Kyiv, the 78-year-old woman is now fighting to save the apartment that she and her husband worked their entire lives to get.

      On paper the apartment actually belongs to others - a man and a women who Shevchenko says tricked her into signing over the flat to them. Now as the issue drags on in a Kyiv courtroom, Shevchenko sits in the home she may soon lose and thinks about that day last December when the whole mess started.

     Shevchenko remembers that she was just about to enter her front door that blustery winter day when she noticed two women near the entrance. They approached her with a request to let them stay in her apartment for a while.

     They seemed like decent enough women and sounded sincere. They told her they'd come from Belarus and could not afford to stay in a hotel or even rent a room. They were persistent and convincing, and finally they persuaded the wary and timid woman to give them shelter.

"I told them from the very beginning that I would not give them propiska at my place," Shevchenko said.

      As a precaution she asked for their passports. Instead they gave her sheet of paper that they had scrawled their names and dates of birth on. She accepted it and the two women moved in.

After a few weeks, the two strangers, Natalia and Olena, gained Shevchenko's confidence.

"They told me they were going to start a small business here," Shevchenko recalled. "They said they'd already found premises for their repair shop, and only had to get the shipment of necessary equipment from Belarus."

     That is when things started going wrong.

    Natalia and Olena claimed that there was a huge duty imposed on the shipment that arrived from Belarus. The only way to avoid the fee was if the shipment was addressed to a citizen of Ukraine. So they asked Shevchenko to sign the documents stating that she was their relative, their aunt.
At first Shevchenko was reluctant to sign, but finally she agreed.

     On the day they were supposed to go to the notary office to sign the documents, Shevchenko suddenly fainted after she drank tea with her two roommates.

"I can say for sure that they'd put something into my cup," Shevchenko said. "Everything blurred, and I could not think clearly. Natalia rushed me outside, where a car and another woman were waiting for us. The other woman, Olena, stayed at home."

    At that point Shevchenko completely lost control of the situation, she recalls. She remembers that she couldn't read a thing on the documents that were placed in front of her because glaucoma had weakened her vision and, in a rush to get to the notary office, she had left her glasses at home.

"When I said to Natalia that I could not see, she told me she would show me where I should sign," Shevchenko said.

Shevchenko did what she was told.

    In the office, there were four people besides herself: the notary, Natalia, and two others - a man and a woman - to whom, as it turned out later, she'd sold her apartment for Hr 8,000 ($1,500).

    Shevchenko never saw any of the money, and she never saw those two strangers again.

    After the signing, Natalia and Shevchenko decided to take a taxi back to the apartment, but on the way, Natalia asked the driver to stop at a market so she could buy something. Shevchenko and the driver waited for two hours, but Natalia never returned.

    Eventually Shevchenko returned to her apartment alone and found the two women had left, taking her books and some of her personal belongings.

    Realizing that she had been cheated, she went back to the notary the next day and saw the documents that she had signed. Her neighbors then advised her to go to the prosecutor who advised her to file a civil claim.

    Such incidents are becoming more common in Kyiv, according to local papers that report cases occurring almost weekly. One reason is that real estate is becoming more lucrative in the capital. A two-room apartment like Shevchenko's goes for $20,000 in Kyiv, whereas it might sell for a paltry $200 in a village or small town in the regions.

    Like Shevchenko, a handful of victims are taking their cases to court. Judge Vadim Nezhura, who is hearing Shevchenko's case, told the Post that he knows of several similar cases. But the outcomes of such cases vary. Sometimes the court finds for the plaintiff, sometimes for the defendant.

"There have been different cases," he said.

   Shevchenko isn't taking chances with her case. Although she has no lawyer, she is determined to fight.

    She has collected medical certificates that prove that her eyesight is failing. And her neighbors have written collective letters both to the prosecutor and to the court, stating that she was never heard speaking about selling her apartment. In fact, they wrote, she spoke of leaving it to her nephew.

    Shevchenko's 62-year-old nephew is her only relative. Shevchenko's husband was a navy colonel who died six years ago. She lost her only daughter in a car accident years ago.

"My husband and I worked all our lives to get this apartment," Shevchenko sighed. "And now they want to take it away from me."

    During a recent hearing, the defendants testified that they had given Shevchenko the money before she signed the documents.

"This man and a woman screamed at me at the court and were very aggressive," Shevchenko says. "And I am all alone; I feel helpless."

    Shevchenko still lives in her apartment, despite the fact that the official owners of the flat have demanded that authorities kick her out. A court order protects Shevchenko from eviction until the case is resolved.

    It's been 10 months since the case was filed with the Kyiv City Court. The case is proceeding, albeit slowly. The matter has been delayed at least six times.

"It is terrible what is going on with her," Shevchenko's neighbor, Georgy Ivanov says. "She is withering before our eyes. It seems that they are delaying the case until she is no longer able to fight."

     Shevchenko herself is in low spirits. Although she hopes for a positive outcome, she is afraid that she won't get justice.

"There was a similar case in a neighboring house," Shevchenko says. "An elderly lonely woman was told to sign documents giving her apartment to criminals or she would be killed. And she threw herself from a nine-story building. That was the way out she found."