Former head of StateGeoCadastre explains why NABU will not be able to take land from ATO soldiers
Kyiv • UNN
Kolotilin explained that the NABU has no grounds to take away the land from the ATO soldiers, as the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences has never had any ownership rights to it. He called the case of the anti-corruption activists a “legal pun.
Oleksandr Kolotilin, former acting head of the State Geocadastre, said that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine has no legal grounds to take away the land allocated to ATO participants and return it to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences, as the latter has never had ownership rights to it. He said this in an interview with UNN .
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The NABU is investigating a criminal case in which detectives suspect former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky of organizing the seizure of NAAS land in Sumy region to transfer it to the ATO military. According to the investigation , these lands were allegedly used by the state-owned enterprises Iskra and Nadiya, and therefore could not be transferred to the ATO soldiers. The Supreme Court and expert examinations ruledthat NABU's accusations were false, because the land plots in question did not belong to the NAAS, and therefore could be privatized by the ATO military on legal grounds, under the right granted to them by the state.
The same is confirmed by Oleksandr Kolotilin, the former head of the State Geocadastre.
“I want to repeat, this land was never legally registered for these state-owned enterprises. It was state land that was in reserve. It was not in the use of other persons, so how can it be taken away from the ATO soldiers, on what grounds? A person legally obtained ownership of this land plot, leases it out - what about the Constitution, which guarantees property rights? They didn't come to the National Academy of Sciences demanding that their land be given back, they were free. This has been confirmed by the courts and other authorities,” he emphasized.
In his opinion, the case of anti-corruption activists about the alleged land grab is a legal pun.
“The state granted the ATO soldiers the right to privatize land plots, and now the state, represented by NABU, comes and says: no, guys, it was not state-owned or state-owned, but not there, “6 says the former head of the State Geocadastre.
In addition, Kolotilin reminded that the police and other law enforcement agencies are investigating many cases of illegal cultivation of land plots by some state-owned enterprises of the National Academy of Sciences and their lease in the “shadow” lease.
“The National Anti-Corruption Bureau opened this case in July 2019, claiming that the allocation of land plots continued until 2021. Why didn't you stop it in the process of the offense then? That is, you just watched the offense take place in order to take away property rights from thousands of people. It's kind of strange. At the very least, they could have contacted the body that was the land manager at the time and found out that there were criminal proceedings for land squatting by state-owned enterprises of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences. After all, the National Police and the Security Service of Ukraine have already studied this situation and have made a final decision that the land was squatted. And now the NABU has intervened and says it's the other way around. So who to believe if all these bodies act on behalf of the state?” he added.
