Razvoj Golf d.o.o and Elitech have submitted a request to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) based in Washington to initiate arbitration proceedings against the Republic of Croatia regarding the golf project on Srđ.
The ICSID website only provides brief information about this, stating that the request was received on September 6 of this year.
Elitech is the founder of Razvoj Golf, which represents the investor in the project for the construction of a sports and recreational center with a golf course on the Srđ plateau above Dubrovnik, valued at over several billion kuna.
The Ministry of Construction and Spatial Planning issued a location permit for the golf project on Srđ to the applicant, Razvoj Golf, on October 12, 2015, at a time when the Government was technical.
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The permit became effective on October 23 and included the construction of a sports and recreational center with a golf course (18+9 holes), the construction of a water supply pipeline (pipeline and facilities), and the reconstruction of the public road from the Adriatic Highway (D8) to Bosanka.
According to the location permit, Razvoj Golf submitted the request on July 31, 2015, and it was determined that the planned intervention is carried out in accordance with the county spatial plan, PPU, and GUP of the City of Dubrovnik, as well as the UPU of the Sports and Recreational Center with a golf course and tourist zones Bosanka north and Bosanka south.
Against this location permit, the civil initiative Srđ is ours filed an administrative dispute. This initiative has opposed the realization of this project from the beginning, claiming that it is an illegal plan for the construction of the golf project on Srđ.
They emphasized, among other things, that the Spatial Plan envisages a sports and recreational center on Srđ that should be built in the interest of citizens, and as the project developed, so did the appetites of investors who changed in the process, so in 2003, the golf project on Srđ was presented with a value of 90 million euros, while the value has since exceeded one billion euros, while the golf project with three planned fields and public facilities has been reduced to one golf course, and everything else has become a zone for the construction of apartments and villas for sale.
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In February of this year, the Administrative Court in Split annulled the location permit for the golf project on Srđ, after the Environmental Impact Study for this project was ‘overturned’ in September of last year.
Namely, the Administrative Court in Split made a decision in September of last year to annul the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Nature’s decision on the acceptability of the Environmental Impact Study for the construction of a sports and recreational center with a golf course on Srđ, based on a lawsuit filed in 2013 by Green Action, the Association of Croatian Architects, and the civil initiative Srđ is ours.
Representatives of Razvoj Golf, i.e., the investors in the golf project on Srđ, such as Maja Brinar and her husband, Israeli investor Aaron Frenkel, have already announced the possibility of a lawsuit regarding this project, stating that even after ten years and an investment of 130 million euros, they cannot initiate the golf project on Srđ. According to some media, the value of this lawsuit is estimated at 500 million euros.
