Translated material
Fire on the "first square"
The political confrontation between regional and city authorities in the Sverdlovsk region reached the security forces
The prosecutor's office and the police in Yekaterinburg found themselves "on opposite sides of the barricades." There are even complaints against the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Ural Federal District, Pyotr Latyshev. And the notorious housing issue, which is used as a method of political struggle, has quarreled the security forces.The Office of the Prosecutor General for the Ural Federal District has declared the allocation of a land plot in the center of Yekaterinburg illegal and is now demanding that regional subordinates initiate a criminal case. For the first time, the general public became aware of the controversial site in the area of Moskovskaya-Shchorsa-Tsiolkovskogo-Aivazovsky streets (the so-called “first square”, not far from the historical center of the city) two weeks ago from a publication on the Kompromat.Ru website. The material said that the mayor's office illegally carried out land allocation to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Ural Federal District, which is headed by Vladimir Kucherov, who is related to the presidential envoy Pyotr Latyshev. The article was a reprint from an anonymous online diary, and therefore, naturally, did not receive wide publicity. There was no reaction from the “heroes” either.
In private conversations, city hall employees confirmed the fact of land acquisition, but asked not to exaggerate - the violations were insignificant. Unofficially, law enforcement agencies also spoke about the existence of a land allotment, arguing that construction would be carried out not in the personal interests of managers, but to provide housing for personnel. This was a symmetrical response from the Yekaterinburg administration to the union of regional authorities and the regional Main Internal Affairs Directorate that emerged last year: Governor Eduard Rossel quickly found a common language with the new head of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate, Mikhail Nikitin, allocated apartments for the top officials of the department, agreeing to thoroughly check all the actions of the Yekaterinburg administration. Since then, seizures at the mayor's office have taken place with a frequency that frightens officials, and all attempts by Mayor Arkady Chernetsky to meet with Mr. Nikitin end in failure. The support of a higher law enforcement structure was supposed to secure the administration.
However, Deputy Prosecutor General Yuri Zolotov, who oversees the department for the Urals Federal District, became interested in the publication on the Internet. He demanded that the information be verified. Last Thursday, the department reported on the results of this audit. “It was established that in February of this year, the district police headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which did not have budgetary funds allocated for this purpose, was illegally allocated a land plot of over 4 hectares in the central part of the regional district for the construction of multi-storey residential buildings with underground garages, parking lots and other infrastructure facilities. center. At the same time, contrary to the requirements of federal legislation, the allocated territory was not registered with the state cadastral register, and the established procedure for purchasing land plots from the population was violated. And the land was provided without a mandatory auction and in the absence of the necessary sanitary and epidemiological conclusion,” the press service of the prosecutor’s office told Vremya Novostey.
The result of the inspection was the filing of an application with the regional arbitration court about the need to cancel the decisions of the city administration, as well as the task for the Sverdlovsk prosecutor's office to continue checking the legality of the allocation of land plots for housing construction on other objects.
The plenipotentiary representative reacted surprisingly quickly - already on Friday morning at the board of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Urals Federal District, dedicated to the results of work in the first half of the year, he spoke about his vision of this story. “In 2004, these plots were allocated for the construction of housing for personnel. One area is being developed, but the allocation of the second had to be prolonged. Under the new legislation, this extension should have been carried out through a competition. The mayor's office, deciding this issue, not only for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but for forty developers, extended it by adopting a resolution. The law was violated, so the resolution will be canceled. Yesterday I spoke with the Minister of Internal Affairs, after all, a site in the city center - we must not lose the chance to provide housing for personnel, and subject to funding from the federal center, at least a million rubles, the already allocated site will not be put up for competition, but is automatically extended,” explained Pyotr Latyshev in a business-like manner.
He assessed the publications on Kompromat.Ru extremely harshly. “I spoke with Mr. Zolotov yesterday and instructed him to deal with this issue. Who gives the information, why is it biased, why don’t we say it as it is, but the department of internal affairs is singled out,” the plenipotentiary envoy listed questions for the prosecutor’s office and asked the head of the Sverdlovsk Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Mikhail Nikitin, to help preserve the land for the district headquarters.
However, the mayor's office understands that one should not count on the help of the chief Sverdlovsk policeman - the Central Internal Affairs Directorate has not abandoned the use of force in the city administration. That same week, documents were seized from the city's architecture department - about 20 law enforcement officers took with them 150 originals of land records, as well as electronic databases. As a result, on Friday the administration department was closed indefinitely and warned that if law enforcement agencies withhold documents for two months, as provided for by the Law “On the Police,” the process of approving and processing documents for housing construction will be frozen for the entire summer.
Fearing this, the presidium of the Association of Builders of Yekaterinburg turned to Pyotr Latyshev with a request to assist in returning the documents, but the plenipotentiary has not yet responded to this appeal - it is now dangerous for him to openly stand up for the mayor’s office.