Tag Archives: Moscow

Moscow prepares to seize

Sichkar’, Olga and Khalil’ Aminov. “Moscow prepares to seize” (“Moskva gotovit izyatie”), Kommersant 197 (4252), 22 October 2009. 22 July 2010 http://www.kommersant.ru/doc-y.aspx?DocsID=1259907.

An evaluation of new legislature proposed by the Moscow Land Resources Department (Moskomzem).  If passed, the law would give Moskomzem the explicit right to seize land that had been left unused for two years (or used outside its allotted use).  Their arguments are that it would stimulate both the fulfillment of the city land plan, as well as the privatization of enterprise lands’ use-rights.  However, one lawyer argues that the law will only be able to be applied to lands under agricultural and construction uses, saying that city administration would be hard pressed to find a legitimate reason to be seizing industrial enterprise land based on non-use of the land.

Land taxes increase 50 times over

“Land taxes increase 50 times over” (“Zemel’niy nalog podorozhaet v 50 raz”), Agentstvo “Kadastrovie Novosti”, 11 September 2009. Federal Cadastre Agency for Real Estate, Media Materials: 14 July 2010 http://r41.kadastr.ru/news/media/1059085/.

Reporting on land tax raises as a result of new Cadastral evaluations.  Land values in Samarskaya Oblast are up 40-60%, in Rostovskaya Oblast they have increased 5 times over, and in Smolensk Oblast they are up 47.7 times.  Rosnedvizhimost’ officers say that tax rates have not yet been adjusted to new market conditions coming after a peak in the land market in late 2007/early 2008.  A managing partner of Miller Samuell Real-Group says these taxes “will simply kill any proprietor and will place a cross on the back of any business.”  In Smolenskaya Oblast, values of land plots under industrial enterprises have increased 47 times, which specialists say will harm production costs, productivity of local industry, profits, and competitiveness.

Problems for other enterprises and administrative bodies have arisen: in Moscow, City Hall is threatening terminating developers’ contracts for residential construction on some 5 million square meters of land that Rosreyester is refusing to register.  The Moscow Oblast Forestry Management has gone against federal recommendations in completing some of its recent land transactions; similar forestry land-use scandals have taken place in Petersburg and Leningradskaya Oblast, as well.

Note: Recent (in action since January 2010) changes to the land tax code are outlined at http://taxpravo.ru/analitika/statya-71574-popravki_po_regionalnyim_i_mestnyim_nalogam_v_2010_godu.

Moscow fiddles with its land

Stupin, Ilya. “Moscow fiddles with its land” (“Moskva khimichit s zemlëy”), Ekspert 25, 29 June 2009, 47. 28 June 2010 http://dlib.eastview.com.ezproxy.middlebury.edu/browse/doc/20287329.

Announcement of a new state land asset company, “Moszemsintez,” and reporting on initial transactions.  Moscow vice-mayor Aleksandr Ryabinin will head the company, formed in order to “manage building projects, mixing the functions of a land bank and of developers, including attracting loans for land assets and real-estate to carry out the company’s goals.”  A few dozen acres in southwest Moscow may be transferred to “Moszemsintez” from Moscow-administration-run OAO “Stroitel’no-sberegatel’naya kassa.”  The lands of jewelry factory “Krasnaya Presnya,” bought out by the city, will now be used as a residential area for resettled residents of Kamushka near Moscow City.  Developers are wary of the new organization, as its role in seizures has yet to be defined.

Land cadaver

“Land cadaver” (“Zemel’niy kadavr”), SmartMoney 22 (112), 23 June 2008. 12 July 2010 http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2008/06/23/5760.

On the situation of unused state-owned land in the capital.  The Gosduma under the auspices of Medvedev has passed a new law (on the Assistance Fund for Residential Construction Development) aimed at redistributing currently unused federal lands that are the most valuable for residential development (as construction lands or as lands for construction material factories).  Out of the 10,000 most attractive hectares, half are located in settled areas, many of which are in Kaliningrad.  A special commission will assess whether or not suspected lands are being used, but the criteria for such categorization and seizure are not delineated in the law.

In one case with the Russian Academy of the Sciences (RAN), whose lands (under permanent perpetual use, according to Vikiteka at http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Устав_Российской_академии_наук) are threatened by the new law, RAN proposed to Putin directly to construct residential buildings for young scientists in order to avoid a supposedly temporary restructuring takeover by the state company “Rostekhnologiya;” nonetheless, in April 2009, operations on these lands were expected to be frozen by a special order of the administration, and then after the passage of the new law, will most likely be given over to the Land Fund or directly to the region.  (An order regarding this freeze of RAN lands from the Kremlin appeared on the Federal State Cadastre website on 30 July 2009 at http://r41.kadastr.ru/news/media/999725/; the first of these lands were to be put up for auction in November, according to http://www.nep08.ru/agroprom/news/2009/10/09/fond_rzhs/).

Difficulties with disagreements over fair compensation and with insufficient monies in the Moscow Department of Land Resources are described, although the new law is expected to inject new momentum and resources into the coffers of available, valuable lands; within the week, first vice-director of the department Oleg Ryzhkov planned to send notices to involved lands.  Some of these Moscow lands will be seized for but small roadway expansions, though seizures for transport were not intended to be enabled by the law.  The fate of a 500-hectare plot in Kaliningrad under military ownership is also discussed.

The Surveyor

Belykh, Anton.  “The Surveyor” (“Zemlemer”), Biznes-Zhurnal 7, 10 April 2007. 15 July 2010 http://www.business-magazine.ru/trends/government/pub282369.

Survey of Moscow land reform.  Article discusses the unwillingness of the Moscow bureaucracy to let go of land ownership, despite the April 2006 passage of No 431-PP “On the transfer of land plots in the city of Moscow to private ownership,” which was aimed at bringing Moscow land legislation and procedures in line with the federal Land Code.  More precisely, it was to change what had been, for all intents and purposes, a non-existent procedure for land privatization into its first existence.  For the law firm Vegas Lex, despite the significant number of land buy-out applications filed with the firm in the first nine months of the new law being in effect, no more than 10 privatization transactions have been successful.  Oleg Ryzhkov and his officers promise that the number of unsuccessful privatizations will soon start to come down.  In addition the bureaucracy’s grasping onto its land rights as a power control, the article also points out that lease payments from land tenants (mostly developers) generate more revenue than would land taxes (i.e., than they did in 2007 at publication).