Statement by the YABLOKO party, 07.10.2015

The Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) proposed an initiative of closing public access to public registers of property rights, including real estate, aviation and water transport. At present register information is available to all, but tomorrow it will be available only to the “competent authorities”. YABLOKO considers this initiative corruption prone and destructive for a transparent modern state and urges to abandon it.

Under the guise of protection of personal data, the authors of the bill intend to hide from public scrutiny unjustified incomes of officials. The bill proposed by FSB represents another attempt of corrupt officials to avoid the responsibility.

The FSB initiative contravenes the worldwide anti-corruption practices. Such registers of property are open in all industrialised countries and effectively prevent money laundering. It is the state that should deal with illegal enrichment and raise the transparency of the system, rather than withholding from the public the information that the society has the right to know.

Such FSB proposals look particularly cynical at the background investigation run by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper about the involvement of the security services in illegal real estate transactions, based on open data from the Unified State Register of Rights to Real Estate and Transactions. Defending their selfish interests, the leaders of the FSB chose nothing better than to propose closing any access to this information. The bill initiated by the FSB contradicts to the best ideas created by the humanity so that to fight corruption.

In the case the bill is adopted, it will affect not only our common public interests, but also millions of people and tens of thousands of organisations. Without access to the Unified State Register of Rights to Real Estate and Transactions it will be impossible to ensure the purity of real estate transactions, fraud will grow and good will citizens will suffer.

We are certain that the proposed legislation must be rejected or changed in such a way that the civil society and everyone could take advantage of the necessary data. We urge the Government of the Russian Federation and the State Duma of the Russian Federation to defend the law and retain access to public property registers.

Sergei Mitrokhin,

YABLOKO Chairman