Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed conducting an audit of all land plots that were transferred to Russian regions in the last ten years. He stated this at a meeting on the development of Far Eastern cities, a recording of which was published on the Kremlin website.
“I would like, probably, through Marat Shakirzyanovich (Khusnullin), to carry out a certain audit of what was transferred over these ten years and what was actually implemented as a result of this transfer,” he said.
We are talking about “giant volumes” of territories, the head of the defense department emphasized. According to him, 28,000 hectares were transferred to Primorye alone; Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Territory and “many other” regions also received large volumes.
“I would like to see, after all, how effectively everything transferred is used in this case,” the minister added.
Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said at the meeting that a full analysis of the transferred plots of federal property had been carried out.
“I’ll tell you straight: all this is not used very effectively,” he explained.
Khusnullin emphasized that the transfer of land should be carried out only in cases where their development is fully prescribed in the “road maps”. “If we see that there is this site in the master plan, there is money, there are networks, there are developers, then we transfer it for use,” he said.
On September 7, the Kommersant newspaper reported the arrest of Major General Konstantin Ogienko on charges of bribery. According to investigators, Ogienko received a bribe from the public organization “Nadezhda” for the allocation of land for defense purposes. From the case materials it follows that the head of the organization collected money from a number of organizations and citizens, promising to provide them with land plots in the near Moscow region. According to the publication, the investigation and the Ministry of Defense are now conducting an inventory of defense and security lands igned to the 1st Air Defense Army. According to law enforcement agencies, part of the land could be withdrawn from military circulation for bribes.