The NABU suspects former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky of helping the ATO soldiers privatize land that allegedly belonged to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences (NAAS). However, the Supreme Court has already ruled that this land had nothing to do with the NAAS. To establish the truth, UNN asked the State Geocadastre for its opinion.
In response to the inquiry, the agency explained that the right to use or own land must always be enshrined in legal documents in accordance with Ukrainian law. The right of ATO/JFO participants to privatize land arose in 2014. They could only apply for free plots. Since then, and until 2022, a total of 180,000 land plots with a total area of almost 263,000 hectares have been allocated to soldiers and their families.
At the same time, Solsky is accused of "appropriating" land for ATO soldiers only within 2,500 hectares. That is, we are talking about about 10% of the land plots allocated to ATO soldiers in general.
The main and so far rhetorical question that anti-corruption activists have not commented on is why the state-owned enterprises of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences, which they support, did not legally and officially register these lands by 2014.
After all, at the time of 2014, the disputed land was actually free, which allowed the ATO soldiers to exercise the right to privatize it.
The StateGeoCadastre confirms that according to the Law "On the State Land Cadastre", the right of ownership or use of land plots that arose before 2004 is considered to be formed regardless of the cadastral number assigned to them.
If information about these land plots is not included in the State Register of Lands, their state registration is carried out on the basis of technical documentation on land management for establishing (restoring) the boundaries of the land plot in kind (on the ground) or a comprehensive plan for the spatial development of the territory of a territorial community, a master plan of a settlement, a detailed plan of the territory at the request of their owners (users of state or municipal land) or a person who has applied for recognition of the inheritance of a deceased person. Other changes to the information about these land plots are made after the state registration of land plots
In other words, the presence or absence of a cadastral number for a land plot would not have hindered the NAAS if they had registered the land at that time.
"Articles 125 and 126 of the Code stipulate, among other things, that ownership of a land plot arises from the moment of state registration of this right and is formalized in accordance with the Law of Ukraine "On State Registration of Real Property Rights and Encumbrances," the StateGeoCadastre said in its response.
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Law enforcement officers are planning to seize land plots of more than a thousand ATO participants in Sumy region, which they legally received as part of free privatization, in the near future. These plans were announced by SAPO prosecutor Anastasia Andronova.
"Those (lands - ed.) that were transferred to the ownership of ATO participants and other persons - we actually had a pre-trial investigation going on, and we decided that it would be more appropriate to do so when we have more complete evidence. In March of this year, we received a number of examinations that were actually attached to the petition materials, which, in our opinion, substantiate the suspicion, and we will soon decide on further measures," said the SAPO representative during a meeting of the HACC Appeals Chamber in the Solskyi case.
The said land plots are claimed by state-owned enterprises of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine "Iskra" and "Nadiya". Since independence, these SOEs have been reorganized and changed their names several times, and during all this time, the Acts of Permanent Land Use have not been issued, which has been clearly proven by the courts of all instances.
"During the consideration of the case, the courts of previous instances found that there were no state acts for the right to permanent use of land plots both for SE Iskra, SE Nadiia and the companies whose legal successors they are.
In addition, the courts found that the decisions on granting the disputed land plots for permanent use to SE Iskra and SE Nadiya were not made in accordance with the procedure established by the Land Code of Ukraine at the time of filing a lawsuit," the decision of the panel of judges of the Commercial Court of Cassation of the Supreme Court of 5 August 2019 reads.
This situation is most outrageous to the ATO soldiers themselves, most of whom are now at the front, defending the country at the cost of their lives. They claim that the land was legally registered. Currently, they are leased out, and the soldiers receive money for it. In response to threats by NABU and SAPO to seize their land, they answer: "let them come to our front".