Hooray! Starting today, everyone can get land for free. True, it’s in the Russian Far East. But it really is free.
The day has come when all residents of Russia can apply for a free plot of land of up to 1 hectare (2.47 acres) anywhere in the Far Eastern Federal District. Previously, this was not possible, because starting June 1 applications could only be submitted for selected pilot municipalities in the Far Eastern regions, and only by residents of the Far Eastern Federal District itself. Now, every resident of the country has that opportunity.
ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) supported this project from the very beginning—and still does. However, we decided to monitor it, because we believe there are corruption risks here. You can read about our findings here and here.
Russia’s Ministry for the Development of the Far East immediately responded to our investigation:
Our lawyers did not wait long and immediately filed an application with the Ministry for the Development of the Far East, recommending that they include Ivan Zhdanov, head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s legal department, in the newly created Public Council. In the end, of course, they did not let us into the Public Council, and our comments were ignored. You can read more about this in the legal department’s Telegram bot.
That’s a real shame, because even today the land allocation system works terribly badly.
Let’s run an experiment together and try to claim the land we’re entitled to right now. (Spoiler: it won’t work).
Let’s begin:
You have to start through the project’s website, after first registering on Gosuslugi (Russia’s government services portal):
After logging in, you will be taken to your personal account, where you can choose what type of plot you want to apply for: - a group plot (shared use) — no more than 10 people and no more than 10 hectares (24.7 acres); - an individual-use plot of up to 1 hectare (2.47 acres).
Our office is big, of course, so we could take a 10-hectare plot (24.7 acres), build an anti-corruption camp on it, and discuss how Chaika and the Tsapok gang built a successful business, and how his children made it all on their own, from scratch. But one hectare will probably be enough for us.
Once we decided to apply for an individual-use plot, we had to find that plot on the map. And this is where the real torment begins. First of all, the map is still painfully slow, and you have to wait up to five minutes for it to load fully. If you’re patient, eventually you’ll see something like this:
Federal law defines places where it is impossible to claim a hectare. These include: - land already in use, - land reserved for state or municipal needs (and there is a lot of it), - land in protected natural areas, - and many, many other categories, including land outside the Far Eastern Federal District. Such areas are marked in gray on the map. So don’t even think about getting a hectare on Red Square.
In our previous posts, we wrote about the shore of Lake Khanka, which is already being densely occupied by people who like to fish and relax there. Let’s stay true to ourselves and head there again. After that decision, our computer sank into eternal hibernation trying to load the map, while we made ourselves comfortable and waited…
So as not to get bored while sitting and waiting, we decided to message support through the Telegram bot. We started with the most important questions:
Now that we had clarified everything, we could have a proper conversation with this person:
So they are telling us honestly right away: the system does not work. You won’t be able to submit an application through the website—come in person and file it on paper.
It then turns out that you can request a map from the local Rosreestr office (Russia’s state real estate registry) or from an MFC (multifunctional public services center), but it will not show the zones where we are not allowed to choose a plot. In other words, the choice becomes completely unpredictable. In that case, the likelihood of rejection increases a hundredfold.
While we were having this pleasant conversation, our map “loaded.” It looked like this:
One step to the left, one step to the right, and everything starts freezing and loading again, so we decided just to click somewhere at random and draw a plot of no more than 1 hectare (2.47 acres). Then we press the “check” button and keep waiting for another 10 minutes, only to get this in the end:
Summary:
Despite many months of test use and pilot projects, the system still does not work. It is not possible to submit an application for a Far Eastern hectare.
This is not at all what you would expect from a project that cost at least 55 million rubles (roughly several hundred thousand U.S. dollars, depending on the exchange rate). The errors that were already visible 8 months ago, when the site was first launched, are still there.
It is still fair to speak of a corruption risk: in the first days, “the system doesn’t work,” and then when it finally starts working for everyone, it turns out that the best hectares have already been taken by the guys running the process. We saw exactly this in the case of Lake Khanka.
We continue to propose a number of specific measures to the ministry on how to fix this.
The Ministry for the Development of the Far East is wasting its time putting on airs and ignoring our proposals. You can act self-important when everything is working perfectly.
ACF will continue monitoring the process and reporting on what is happening with our hectares of land.