Analytics

“Good faith purchasers” or legalization of stolen goods? Why Ukrainians are demanding a veto on the scandalous draft law No. 12089

ANALYSIS

Within ten days, a petition to veto draft law No. 12089, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on March 20, received the required number of votes. This is a document that is supposed to protect a bona fide purchaser of property, but in fact will allow land, forests, water banks, basements of buildings, etc. to be transferred to private hands. However, interested parties do not lose hope and have registered a petition in support of this law. Events are moving fast. Now we just have to wait for the president’s decision.

According to the author of the veto petition, Hlukhiv mayor and businessman Michel Tereshchenko, 25,000 signatures have been collected, and he thanks everyone who signed it and helped to spread the petition.

“Our goal is to achieve a Veto, to send this bill to the trash bin forever and make the parliament finally respect the Constitution – to preserve forests, nature reserves, archaeological sites, cultural heritage sites, and more. Many thanks to our ministries who opposed the anti-constitutional draft law No. 12089, provided letters about its threats and even called for a veto,”

– said Michel Tereshchenko.

But the author of the petition asked not to stop and continue signing it.

“Our opponents are extremely powerful and have lobbies everywhere: you have already seen how as many as 273 MPs openly voted for the completely unconstitutional No. 12089, thus violating the highest law – the Constitution of Ukraine,”

– Tereshchenko said.

The investor was silenced

Indeed, a petition supporting the bill has appeared on the president’s website. Its author is entrepreneur Andriy Semydydko, who claims that this law prevents security forces and judges from challenging the ownership of citizens and entrepreneurs to their property. The law sets a 10-year period for possible claims on behalf of the state.

“The law regulates the situation when a person who acquired property or land plots did not know and could not have known that the relevant objects were alienated illegally. Such an approach is extremely important for the development of the business community (national or international), as investors should not be responsible for mistakes made by public authorities in the distant past, and the state’s duty is to ensure legal certainty, stability and guarantees of inviolability of property rights in this area,”

– notes Semydydko.

Currently, the situation is such that if law enforcement agencies make claims to real estate, even if they relate to events that happened thirty years ago, all responsibility is placed solely on a bona fide investor who, for example, has been quietly owning legally acquired property for 20 years and suddenly receives rather strange, unreasonable demands from the state. And in fact, he has no way to defend himself.

And, according to Semydydko, as long as the state, in particular its law enforcement agencies, can initiate a review of property decisions made many years ago, Ukraine will be in a zone of investment turbulence. The author believes that this is the problem the law should solve. Signatures are being actively collected. From March 24 to March 28, more than 8,000 people signed the petition.

Moreover, an advertisement with a link to the petition appeared on the Internet, stating that the bill puts an end to raiding. However, most lawyers believe that this law is aimed at legalizing stolen goods.

“They want the stolen state and communal land to remain with the criminals, whom they call ‘bona fide purchasers’, regardless of how or under what schemes they acquired the land. But, if we have to return these lands, we will also have to receive compensation from the state budget, i.e. at the expense of taxpayers, at our expense. These “bona fide” people who have taken possession of protected lands or coastal areas through various schemes will not lose anything,”

– said lawyer Valentyn Serov.

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If the law is adopted, nothing can be taken away

At the same time, judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, experts from the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Justice, the State Forestry Agency, the State Water Agency, and public activists spoke out against the inadmissibility of adopting the law in its current version. In particular, the petition was signed by Oksana Prodan, Advisor to the Head of the Association of Ukrainian Cities, who believes that the voted draft law No. 12089 takes away illegally seized shores, forests, fields, squares and parks from the people of Ukraine.

“Martial law has enabled the authorities to restrict people’s rights and limit democracy. But even martial law cannot justify the desire to take away the land that the people are defending from the aggressor with weapons. Martial law obliges to fight corruption, not to legalize it,”

– Oksana Prodan believes.

Environmentalists point out that the state is currently suing many private owners who have acquired land illegally, and this law will destroy the entire line of defense of the state and allow individuals to appropriate state or municipal property.

“The content of the law is much broader than its title. In essence, it creates the possibility of alienating state property (primarily forests, water bodies, etc.) in favor of private individuals. The limited access to the State Land Cadastre due to the martial law regime creates ample opportunities for illegal land grabbing, including the forest fund, which is on the balance sheet of the state and communities,”

– said Yaroslav Teleshun, Head of the Ecopolitics Department at WWF-Ukraine.

The law legalizes murky schemes

Environmentalists warn that the law creates a number of risks, including spending budget funds to compensate owners who received land plots in violation of the law and uncontrolled development of forests and coastal zones. He proposes to limit the period for returning illegally alienated land plots to state or municipal ownership to 10 years. This means that they will remain in private hands forever.

And if the court decides to return the land plot back to state or community ownership, they will be obliged to compensate the private owner for its market value. These provisions are threatening, as they effectively legitimize the dubious land distribution schemes that took place in the past. In addition, environmentalists say, this draft law directly contradicts the Constitution of Ukraine and international law.

The confrontation is growing. The law has not yet been signed. We will find out which side the guarantor of the Constitution will take in the near future.

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Author: Alla Dunina