ELEVEN residents of Qingshuihe Village in Luohu District filed a lawsuit against a joint-stock company and a property developer over disputes over a real estate project that involve 25 billion yuan (US$3.85 billion) at a Luohu court, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

Qingshuihe Village is located near Shenzhen East Railway Station in Luohu. A joint-stock company was established by the village in 2002. Due to the land expropriation in the village for the construction of Yuping Expressway, the city government allocated a 50,000-square-meter land parcel in Xili in Nanshan District to the company as compensation in 2003.

Liang Ronghui, a company shareholder, said the company’s head signed an agreement with a property developer to jointly build a real estate project on the land parcel without the consent of other villagers.

According to the agreement, villagers would provide the land and the property developer would pay for the construction of the estate. In return, 20 percent of the apartments in the estate would be given to the villagers and the rest would be owned by the developer.

Liang and some of the villagers believe that the company’s head sold their land at a cheap price. He said that at a meeting of company shareholders most of the villagers didn’t approve of the agreement and instead demanded 40 percent of the apartments in the estate.

The real estate project, with a total floorage of 360,000 square meters, was launched in 2014. Currently, the average price of a pre-owned apartment in the estate is 70,000 to 80,000 yuan per square meter.

According to Liang, the disputes have remained unsettled for many years and fewer villagers are willing to join him in sueing the company and the developer. This time, only 11 villagers jointly filed the lawsuit.

Liang said the agreement doesn’t have legal effect because it wasn’t approved by the board of directors of the company.

There are 181 villagers eligible for a share in the real estate project. If the villagers won the lawsuit, they would obtain 40 percent of the apartments in the estate, which are worth over 10 billion yuan in total. This means each villager could get a share worth over 60 million yuan. (Zhang Yang)