We have something to report on the progress of the project monitoring land allocation in the Russian Far East.
Let me remind you that a law has been passed under which every citizen can receive one hectare (about 2.47 acres) of land in the east of the country free of charge. The program is currently in its pilot phase, and for now the land is available only in certain areas and only to people officially registered as residents of the Russian Far East.
As I wrote, we consider this project very good and useful, but there are still problems with how it is being implemented. In fact, even Minister Trutnev admits as much.
The ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) looked into what is happening from a corruption standpoint, and we found a few things.
But first, the good news:
In my previous post, I wrote that the website was basically unusable, that in the first few days no ordinary person was able to submit an application for land, and your comments under that post fully confirmed it.
There was massive confusion, and users were simply getting lost.
The developers have now finally added a pop-up window explaining that from June 1 to October 1, 2016, several pilot municipalities are participating, where you can reserve your hectare, and yes, to do that you must be officially registered in the Russian Far East:
An updated map has appeared. It now works much faster than it did during the first two days after the project launched, when there were only 500 applications for a population of several million.
Before:
After:
This time, almost the entire map is shaded gray, with only the pilot areas left unshaded. It may seem like a small thing, but it makes finding the right location and selecting a plot a hundred times easier. Believe me, if you try applying for a plot yourself, you’ll see how important this is.
Now for the bad and suspicious part.
Let’s think like an ordinary person who wants to get the best, most valuable land possible.
The most expensive land among the available options is in Primorye (Primorsky Krai). And within Primorye itself, you would most likely choose Khankaysky District.
First, it has a great location — right on the border with China. Second, there is the beautiful Lake Khanka:
It’s a nature reserve, a wonderful place, at roughly the same latitude as Sochi (a Russian Black Sea resort city). The recently arrested mayor of Vladivostok had a recreation complex there with a helipad. You understand — he wouldn’t have built it in a bad location.
The lake is home to 52 species of fish, including common carp, topmouth culter, silver carp, catfish, and snakehead. Its proximity to China creates enormous opportunities for tourism and trade.
And of course, it would also be a great place to throw up some summer houses.
Decision made: we’ll catch fish, sell it to the Chinese, organize tours, build a house, and enjoy the views of Lake Khanka. All that remains is to choose a plot, so we open the map and take a look — there’s the lake:
We zoom in closer to get a good look at the very best spot — one with a gentle shoreline, a road, and infrastructure:
Here are the coordinates, if you want to look it up in Google Earth: 44.801013, 132.035408
Here are some photos from that location:
A sandy beach, an oak forest. Should we take it? Of course we should.
We zoom in on the map to choose a plot:
Uh-oh. It may look as if little green men have landed on the shore. Almost.
That is how the map marks plots for which applications have already been submitted. And all of these plots were systematically claimed by people on the very first day the website went live.
That same day, when nothing worked for everyone else. Apparently, these crafty and lucky people simply knew secrets about how the website worked that ordinary citizens knew nothing about. If you look even more closely, some of them even managed to organize themselves into groups of 10 and claim blocks of 10 hectares (about 24.7 acres):
So here is a fact from the ACF: on the first day, when the website did not work for ordinary mortals and would not let them apply for a plot, some group of people somehow managed to claim the most expensive and desirable land among the options available.
It is hard to say exactly how much, but somewhere around 70 hectares (about 173 acres). All of it right along the water, all packed tightly together.
There is no doubt that some enterprising people quickly grabbed this land for a cottage settlement, a recreation base, or a hotel. They took the first line by the shore, and there is no longer any rush to take the second, third, and so on — those plots have sharply lost their appeal. Whoever ends up taking that land will have to negotiate with the owners of the first line.
Is this corruption? We don’t know.
But we do not really believe in that kind of coincidence: the map did not work for anyone that day, yet those for whom it somehow did work decided, in an organized way, to take plots in neat rows in one single place. The best place.
Especially since, let me remind you, carving out even a single hectare is quite a difficult task for someone who does not understand cadastral procedures at all.
The ACF will send a letter to Minister Trutnev and ask for an investigation into how this remarkable coincidence came about.
In addition, we are asking for the public release of data that would minimize the possibility of such abuse: the date and time a plot was reserved, as well as the full name of the person who registered it.
If that data were public now, we could simply check all those people for ties to government officials, and everything would become clear. But for now they remain “mysterious acquirers,” and the suspicions remain.
As for us, we did manage to complete the experimental process of obtaining a hectare.
This is what it looked like:
The spot is a little farther away, and the shore there is rocky. We go through the now-familiar procedures, outline the desired piece of land, and try to keep it within an area of no more than 1 hectare (about 2.47 acres).
We click the “Check” button and wait no more than a minute:
The plot has been checked, which is something we can congratulate ourselves on, because last time the system simply froze at this step. As you can see in the image, after the plot is checked a “Submit application” button now appears. We click it and get:
An error — several times, in fact — and each time when trying to reserve land right by the shore. We try the same thing again, but with a plot a little farther from the water:
This time everything goes fine, and perhaps in 30 days the land will be ours:
We probably won’t be able to do any fishing there anymore, but the project website offers plenty of other options. For example, you could raise sheep, goats, or rabbits, or even grow strawberries outdoors.
In the end, it is fair to say that the website more or less works, although there are technical problems in the form of constant error messages. For now, this is really only for very patient people.
There is still plenty to improve, and we will prepare entirely constructive proposals (for those who wanted something “positive” from the ACF — rejoice!) on how to improve the system and increase trust in it.
We will continue to report on the project’s progress.