Moscow, May 15 - French retail giant Auchan has come under fire from Russia's general prosecutor and environmental watchdog, which said on Thursday the firm was in "gross violation of the law".
The statement from the Natural Resources Ministry, which houses the environmental agency, said Auchan's oldest location in Russia -- a 50 hectare cluster of stores -- is standing on a plot of government land reserved for the Russian Institute of Agricultural Sciences.
"I trust that the illegally seized land will be returned to the government, and the people responsible for the illegal use of the space will be punished," said Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the environmental agency.
An Auchan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his company had not received any notice of the accusation.
"We bought this space in good faith, on a legal basis and with the blessing of the deputy head of the Moscow regional administration," the official said.
Mitvol, who is personally handling the case, is a firebrand environment official whose name has become synonymous in Russia with government arm-twisting.
In 2006 he led a crusade that pressured Royal Dutch Shell to sell control of a huge oil and gas deposit off Russia's Pacific coast to state-controlled Gazprom.
Thursday's statement also quoted a letter to Mitvol from the general prosecutor's office, threatening legal action over the land.
"Based on the investigation, we are considering the idea of filing a legal claim to defend the property interests of the Russian Federation," the statement cited the letter as saying.
The stores in question -- Auchan's hardware megastore Leroy Merlin and its sporting goods outlet Decathlon, as well as an Auchan food retail outlet -- are on a 320-hectare plot in the suburb of Mytishchy just north of Moscow.
Before 2000 the land belonged to a branch of the Russian Agricultural Academy, but in accordance with a Moscow region programme to develop, the area was then leased to the private sector, in part to Auchan and London-listed real estate developer PIK Group.
Auchan opened Russia's first European-owned hypermarket complex there in 2002.
"This must be some kind of misunderstanding," said PIK Group spokeswoman Natalya Konovalova.
"We bought the land fair and square and are developing it according to the law. No one has informed us of anything."