Inconsistency between departments allows for the development of seemingly inaccessible areas / G. Shpikalov / ITAR-TASS

For example, 30.6 hectares on the territory of the Arkhangelskoye estate complex, according to the joint venture documents, went to Business Park Development LLC. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the company belongs to the Cypriot Vainom Investments Ltd, which is owned by the structure of AFK Sistema , the Luxembourg Ecu Gest.

In April 2013, the Istra District Administration contributed a 44.5-hectare plot of land, partly included in the protected area of the New Jerusalem Monastery in Istra, to the authorized capital of Severny LLC, according to the SP materials. After the transaction, the land was allowed to be used for dacha construction. Severny is listed as an affiliate of Gazprombank. The bank's press service stated that the land was acquired legally: "There are no risks of our buyers losing their rights to the plots."

Corrected version. The original published version can be viewed in the Vedomosti archive (Smart version).

The Accounts Chamber (AC) announced in February that violations had been found in transactions involving lands in the Moscow region with a total area of 3.5 million square meters: according to auditors, the federal budget had lost 28.1 billion rubles because of them. According to the AC, officials from the Federal Property Management Agency and Rosreestr, firstly, allowed the use of a preferential privatization procedure, as a result of which buyers acquired land significantly cheaper than its cadastral value, and secondly, they actually allowed the use of lands from the forest fund, specially protected natural areas (SPNA) and protected zones of historical and cultural monuments for development. Now the AC is demanding that authorities and organizations "eliminate the violations identified and prevent their possible repetition."

The materials of the joint venture, which were made available to Vedomosti, show that at least some of the areas that gave rise to the joint venture’s claims now belong to large Russian companies.

Problems with culture

The land was privatized as follows. A 68-hectare plot was registered as property in three days in May 2012; the buyer, an individual, paid 15.3 million rubles for it, with a cadastral value of less than 500,000 rubles. At the same time, the cadastral value of a neighboring plot of similar area is 191.2 million rubles. A month later, the plot was divided into three parts, one of which, after a double resale, went to the Sistema structure. The AFK press service confirmed the purchase: “The plot was purchased on the market, from a private individual. A decision on the further use of the plot has not been made.”

Another plot of 12.5 hectares in the Arkhangelskoye security zone was bought, according to the Accounts Chamber, in December 2011, again by an individual for 2.8 million rubles - 300 times cheaper than its current cadastral value. Later, the type of permitted use of the plot was changed from "sanitary protection zone of water supply facilities" to "individual housing construction".

In the Arkhangelskoye security zone, it was prohibited to allocate land for any construction, and near the New Jerusalem Monastery, to build housing without approval from the Ministry of Culture and other organizations responsible for the protection of monuments, and such permits and approvals did not exist at the time of the inspection, the Accounts Chamber notes.

However, the Rosreestr for the Moscow Region has already stated that the property rights to the land near the Arkhangelskoye and Novoierusalimsky monasteries were registered legally, since the boundaries of these monuments were established after the privatization of the plots. The Accounts Chamber's audit refutes this, according to a person familiar with its results: the security zone of Arkhangelskoye was determined 10 years before the sale of the aforementioned plots, and of the Novoierusalimsky Monastery - two years before.

Notes on nature

The 15.5-hectare plot of land in the water protection zone within the boundaries of the Upper Moscow River Protected Area was privatized by ZAO Rublyovo in 2002 (see inset). In 2011, the OPIN group, part of Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim, began building the Rublyovo residential complex on this plot, and in 2012 Onexim bought out the company that owned the plot, the Onexim press service reported: "This is essentially the only undeveloped plot of land in the immediate vicinity."

Construction work on the site is currently in full swing, apartments with a view of the Moscow River are up for sale. The materials of the Accounts Chamber indicate that any construction was prohibited on this land before privatization. Since 2007, low-rise and mid-rise residential buildings with sports and recreational, administrative and auxiliary facilities have been permitted there, according to documents provided by OPIN.

There is confusion with the protected area "Upper Moscow": some departments believe that it exists, while others believe that it does not, because its creation "de jure" was not completed, an employee of the Department of Rosprirodnadzor for the Central Federal District explained to Vedomosti. In any case, this zone consists of several natural monuments included in the registers of protected natural territories with all formalities observed, he continues. But even the territory of these monuments is being built up, since their boundaries have not yet been entered into the cadastre, Vedomosti's interlocutor regrets.

Officially, the Upper Moscow River Protected Area does not exist, OPIN claims: in 1999, the issue of its creation was considered (in June, a resolution was adopted by the joint committee of the governing bodies of Moscow and the Moscow region on its creation. - Vedomosti), but the boundaries were not defined, and now there is not a single document confirming that the land of ZAO Rublevo belonged to any natural territory.

Nevertheless, a representative of Rosreestr told Vedomosti that “in the process of registration actions” with sections of the Upper Moscow River protected area, violations were committed.

Notes on rest

The privatization of several forest areas on Rublevka stopped simultaneously with the SP inspection.

The audit found that in 2012, the territorial administration (TU) of the Federal Property Management Agency for the Moscow Region registered contracts for the purchase and sale of several dozen hectares of forest land near the prestigious village of Nikolina Gora. The Accounts Chamber saw contracts with the signatures of the previous head of the TU of the Federal Property Management Agency and the agency's seals, as well as documents on payment for the plots. Judging by them, the land in the forest near the village of Maslovo, next to the boarding house of the Presidential Property Management Department of the same name, did not cost the buyers - the companies OOO Resurs Servis, OOO Finprom, OOO Metresurs and OOO Artefakto - much: they paid 500 million rubles for 82.6 hectares, with the cadastral value of the plots being 3.2 billion rubles. The companies were able to take advantage of the preferential privatization scheme because they had been renting the plots since 2008 “for recreational purposes” and in 2012 they registered the guest houses built there as their property. According to the Accounts Chamber, the construction was carried out illegally.

However, companies as property owners received the right to privatize land for 15% of its cadastral value.

The first three companies on the list are controlled by former Sibur vice president Boris Vaninsky through the offshore companies Pineforest Recreation Holding and Rodcroft Limited. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Artefakto LLC belongs to Grigory Kovalchuk.

Both Vaninsky and representatives of the Federal Property Management Agency deny that the plots were privatized, claiming that the land is still leased. Vedomosti was unable to contact Kovalchuk.

It is possible to understand what happened to one of the sales contracts from the documents of the arbitration courts. In 2013, OOO Metresurs itself filed a claim against Rosimushchestvo, claiming that the agency ordered that the company be granted ownership of a plot of land that it had leased until 2055, but the original sales contract, duly signed by the parties, was never concluded. The plaintiff demanded that Rosimushchestvo pay the money received for the unfulfilled contract. His demands were satisfied by two courts.

"In 2011, the plots were transferred to the category of 'settlement lands,' Vaninsky said, 'and will be used for the construction of a sports and recreation complex.' He also claims that the company demolished all the buildings previously built on the plots. A Vedomosti correspondent who visited Maslovo was unable to verify this: the only forest area in the area of the village is surrounded on all sides by a high fence.

What can be done

“The efforts of the inspected authorities and organizations should be aimed at eliminating the identified violations and preventing their possible repetition,” the Accounts Chamber press service stated.

Rosreestr cannot do anything with transactions that have already been carried out, its representative explains and redirects the SP's claims to local authorities: "The acts of local government bodies presented as title documents have not been challenged by anyone to date, and the registration actions have not been appealed."

In order to stop the scheme, which the AC considers illegal, it is necessary to submit the relevant representations to the prosecutor's office, believes Vitaly Mozharovsky, partner at the law firm Goltsblat BLP.

"The Accounts Chamber's claims against Rosreestr are most likely truly unfounded," he continues. "The cases discovered by the Accounts Chamber occurred because the relevant departments responsible for various types of protected zones, whether it be the Ministry of Culture in the case of monuments or Rospotrebnadzor in the case of drinking water supply sanitary protection zones, establish the boundaries of these zones, but do not enter them into the real estate cadastre and the Unified State Register of Rights, and no one knows about them." To prevent such cases from recurring, the relevant departments, including Rosimushchestvo, need to finish their work, and information about all protected zones should be public, the lawyer believes.

And the main problem, in his opinion, is the lack of communication between government bodies: “Local authorities manage federal property, Rosimushchestvo does not know what it owns and where it is located.”

How the Moscow region was sold