Despite the fact that the Ukrainian authorities previously promised that the issue of selling Ukrainian land to foreigners would be decided in a referendum, amendments are already being made to the legislation to open up this possibility.
Economic expert Roman Gubrienko stated this on CapitalTV, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
In particular, bill No. 2194 “On amendments to the Land Code of Ukraine and other legislative acts regarding the improvement of the management system and deregulation in the field of land relations” provides for the exclusion from the Land Code of the mention that only citizens and legal entities of Ukraine can buy land.
“The main function of this bill is that it contains such a trick that by changing the intended purpose of a land plot, foreigners can gain control, that is, not only take it on a long-term lease, but even register ownership rights to it. But our lobbyists lobbied so much that they already provided for simply cheating things.
For example (which the Main Legal Department directly draws attention to in its conclusion to this legislative recapitulation), they removed the word “Ukraine” from the wording of Article 130. There [there was] such wording that individuals could transfer agricultural land for use to legal entities of Ukraine. They crossed out the word “Ukraine”—a petty, petty dirty trick. As a result, it turned out that they could simply transfer it to legal entities, including foreign ones.
This bill is utter horror from the point of view of technical and legal language. They crammed a lot of things in there, and due to the fact that our lobbyists are not very good at lobbying, it turned out to be a complete fuss and porridge,” said Roman Gubrienko.