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Raiders Seizing Prime Farm Land
by By Alina Travina and Sergei Fyodorov
source: http://mnweekly.rian.ru/local/20070816/55268471.html
The day is not far away when the rural areas surrounding Moscow will no longer be dotted by hamlets and villages and agricultural enterprises. In their place will rise cottages and villas belonging to the wealthy of Moscow and its environs.
Today, raiders (armed gangs who illegally seize the property of other people) are more active than ever in the Moscow Region, and it seems they are here to stay. The misfortune that has befallen the rural areas surrounding Moscow is comparable to England's Enclosure of the 15th-18th centuries, when landlords pushed farmers from the land in order to make what they thought was better use of the property. There is, however, one significant difference. In the England of olden times, sheep were later raised on the seized lands. In present-day Russia, businessmen disguised as investors have no intention of engaging in agriculture on the ill-gotten lands.
Horses Taken Hostage
The gang of raiders took the stable without a fight. They simply fenced off the area with barbed wire, placed two of their thugs at the gates, and cut off power from the premises. Thus, about 70 horses from Vivat, a children and adolescent retreat, were deprived of water and light. In the end, more than a hundred children - many of them ill - lost their beloved horses. This ruthless raid took place in July of this year at the Serp i Molot state farm in the Balashikha District of the Moscow Region.
Three years ago, Vivat signed a contract with the state farm to lease three facilities and two hectares of land for 25 years. A few months later, the state farm changed hands. It's not clear how this transaction occurred, but the new owner, in the person of Yelena Melnikova, behaved in a manner that betrayed her association with the raiders. The state farm was now sold property.
Vivat Club won two lawsuits in a row. The Balashikha City Court rejected Melnikova's claim to the retreat's land and buildings. But Melnikova did not give up. She re-registered herself as an individual entrepreneur, and by some strange means won the third suit, which took place at the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region. The court ruled to evict Vivat from the state farm's territory. A criminal suit was promptly brought against the retreat's director for refusing to abide by the court's ruling.
Vivat's defenders succeeded in getting a hearing from Boris Gromov, governor of the Moscow Region. He promised to let the retreat keep its premises. However, the administration of the Balashikha District is not in a hurry to issue the relevant decisions. According to Vivat's managers, the head of the Balashikha administration, Vladimir Samodelov, is inaccessible to them. This leads the aggrieved parties to the only logical conclusion: Some "top people" must have had a say in the case. Meanwhile, the animals (the horses and the foals) are still locked up and lack the proper care.
This case came to public awareness thanks to an interregional public movement called, "Peasant Front." It sounds a bit like a military name, but,the movement's founders say, it is precisely in conditions of warfare that Russia's rural residents are living today. The movement was established just over a year ago by peasants from 20 districts of the Moscow Region for the purpose of defending themselves against raiders, who have been snapping up land with the support of corrupt local officials. Dmitry Larionov, a leader of the Peasant Front, says: "Raiding in the countryside today is taking place like a national project - in a serious way and with all support from the authorities."
Pocketing Other People's
Land Shares
The scale of "business" raiding is astounding. The Moscow Region has seen raiders seize nearly 300 agricultural enterprises at the same time. But the raiders are anything but common riff-raff. Dmitry Larionov of the Peasant Front names such raiding-related structures as Mezhprombank, Promsvyazbank, Vneshagrobank, the banks Absolyut and Vizavi, Vimm-Bill-Dann, East Line, and investment banking group NIKoil. Behind the majority of them stand the richest Russians on the Forbes list. These billionaires ought to know a thing or two about efficient land utilization. Although the representatives of the said structures shrug off all accusations against them, the majority of them acquire land to resell it, including to people who need land to build a mansion, for example. According to official figures, 35 percent of agricultural land in the Moscow Region lays idle. Larionov puts the figure at 70 percent. Among the aggrieved parties is the Moscow city government, which owns agricultural areas in the Moscow Region.
The situation is far worse in other regions. Around all big cities, raiders are seizing vast areas, and agricultural lands are being used for purposes other than farming.
The schemes for seizing kolkhoz lands (collectives) include particularly cynical ones, such as those that make use of national projects. Vasily Melnichenko, human rights campaigner from the Urals People's Assembly, witnessed this principle being applied to seize and ruin 14 large agricultural enterprises in the Sverdlovsk Region. He says: "All agricultural enterprises in the region are debtors of power generator Sverdlovskenergo. It takes a debtor to court, and a month later the debtor becomes bankrupt. After that, an administrator comes to the enterprise, allegedly to restore its solvency. Under a relevant national project, he gets money to build affordable housing. After he has pocketed the money, the bankrupted enterprise is wrecked and ruined. Its employees are evicted from their houses (given to them by the enterprise) after electricity and water supplies are cut off. The houses are broken down and what can be sold... is hauled away."
Says Vyacheslav Glazychev, chairman of the RF Public Chamber's Commission for Regional Development and Self-government: "The restructuring of the agro-industrial complex is indeed a painful process. However, it must be carried out through normal buyout and at normal prices, as has been done in the civilized world since the late 19th century. To call a spade a spade, raiding in the context of Russia simply means robbery. Our respected companies engage in robbery pure and simple, not in bona fide commerce. Managerial efficiency is not their concern. Nothing can justify their illegal seizure of other people's property."
It may seem logical to ask: Why can't the state put an end to raiding?
Well, the state certainly knows about the problem. The illegal seizure of agricultural land came under consideration at the last joint session of the collegiums of the Agriculture Ministry, the Accounts Chamber (which monitors fulfillment of the federal budget), and the Prosecutor General's Office. Thus, these top bodies of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are fully aware of the armed robbery perpetrated by raiders. Yet they don't do anything about it. Their silence suggests that many officials at different federal ministries have a vested interest in the continuation of raiders' seizures of agricultural land. Otherwise the government would have long clamped down on such illicit practices.
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