Military real estate demobilized
The Defense Ministry launched a campaign to clarify the concept of property management of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation approved in October. The document is not a simple and significant document, which was born as a result of the scandal around the activities of Oboronservis and the change of leadership in the Ministry of Defense. It was developed for almost a year on behalf of the new head of department, Army General Sergei Shoigu. The other day, the anniversary of his tenure as director of the Department of Property Relations (DIO) of the Ministry of Defense was noted by Dmitry Kurakin, having arranged a meeting with journalists, where he spoke in detail about the goals, objectives and key provisions of the developed concept. Well, in general, he explained the meaning of the “new property policy of the ministry”.
“First of all,” said Kurakin, “the target installation has fundamentally changed in the management of the Defense Ministry’s assets. We no longer assume that the agency must earn money for its own content. We believe that everything the Armed Forces need, they should receive from the state. Our property policy is aimed at providing them with an adequate set of assets - exactly the ones that are needed. ”
But today, the Armed Forces in fact have a clearly redundant property complex - one that has developed over the decades of their existence during the Soviet period. Meanwhile, over the past 20 years, the number of the Russian army has declined almost three times, its structure has changed, the other has become its equipment. And this means that she simply does not need as much property as before. They tried to free themselves from surplus under all previous ministers of defense. And unsightly story Oboronservis, which was actively involved in the sale of the released property, showed everyone that this process was going on without basic rules and strict regulation. So the recently adopted concept has become, in fact, the first such document in the modern history of the Ministry of Defense.
BENEFIT FROM FREE TRANSMISSION
The concept indicates a fairly wide range of ways by which you can get rid of surplus. Starting with a donation to the subjects of the Federation, renting and until the realization of unnecessary property. At the same time, the head of the DIO emphasized that now "in no case should there be a conflict between property managers, who, of course, seek to get as much revenue from the transactions they make, and the interests of the Armed Forces." Kurakin believes that now the department should no longer create situations that regularly arose under the former head of the DIO, Evgenia Vasilyeva. For example, when a building in the center of Moscow is being implemented and at the same time the military authorities are deficient in space for their needs. Such a conflict of interest should be excluded by setting the right goals, identifying the highest priority among them. Well, let's say, it was stated that an important for the state or socially significant donation of some real estate objects has absolute priority over the benefit of the Ministry of Defense from making a profit on property sales. At the same time, this should be combined with the priority of performing the service function in relation to the Armed Forces. How?
The Armed Forces have a huge number of facilities, in principle, already unnecessary to the army, but the agency spends enormous resources on their maintenance, estimated in tens of billions of rubles. Here it is not decisive how to get income from the use or prospective sale of this property, but the speed with which the Armed Forces will generally free themselves from surplus. Moreover, a year ago the Minister of Defense announced a moratorium on the sale of real estate. From that moment to this day no object was sold.
But by November 2013, the Ministry of Defense donated 1100 military townships to municipal ownership (up to November November, 2012 were the entire 95 townships). And by the end of this year DIO intends to bring the number of fully completed programs to 1700. Next year, only very complicated cases will be left when the military camp is not transferred entirely, but with the preservation of some objects on its territory at the disposal of the department, if they are still needed by the Armed Forces. This implies rather procedurally complex events related to the division of land and property itself. However, the transfer that has already been made, allowed to save about 8,5 billion rubles. previously required costs. This was the direct economy of the Ministry of Defense, which stopped spending money on the maintenance of military camps. And before the end of 2013, they intend to increase it ...
And then the time will come for the lifting of the moratorium on the sale of military property. Dmitry Kurakin argues that this can happen in the first quarter of 2014, if several legal acts at the government level are quickly adopted in the development of the approved concept and changes are made to one of the presidential decrees. Amendments of a purely technical plan aimed at stricter regulation of the procedure for the selection of sellers of military equipment in the regions. Now these legal acts are under examination in the Ministry of Justice, from where they will be submitted to the government for consideration.
What prompted the adjustment mechanisms for the implementation of military property? An analysis of the trades that the Ministry of Defense conducted during 2011 – 2012 showed that 80% of them were only announced, but did not take place. Or it was the bidding with a single participant, who was recognized as their winner and who received the property at the starting price. “Of course, the implementation mechanism that gives us such results cannot be considered effective,” says the current director of the DIO. - The conclusion is: the Ministry of Defense officials themselves should not sell real estate. It is necessary to involve professional real estate market participants with the necessary capabilities and experience. And we are going to reward the seller, his fee is directly dependent on the result of the auction. Such a system will be the basis for the selection of sellers. ”
It seems that everything is logical ... But for some reason I want to ask: wasn’t that when Vasilyeva wasn’t? Weren't some persons involved in the notorious “Oboronservis case” not just hired appraisers or sellers of military property? And were they not suspicious of mercenary aspirations for receiving their, as they thought, legal interest on transactions?
COMMERCE NOT GOING INTO THE PAST
In general, Dmitry Kurakin, talking about the current activities of the property relations department, regularly made the following remark: “It was practiced even before us”. The impression was created that the head of the DIO insistently made it clear that he had no serious complaints about the team of predecessors. Like, they did not do anything terrible, although they made a number of miscalculations. Then he was directly asked: “How will illegal transactions be revealed and what will be the reaction to them?”
Kurakin responded as follows: “Illegal transactions, say, with undervaluing of real estate objects, are hardly technically possible, because according to the previous rules, and according to the standards that continue to apply, the procedure for the sale of any state property is very strictly regulated. Here, some fantasies, some initiative on the ground will inevitably cause in the future the refusal of the state registration of transfer of ownership, other negative consequences. Therefore, the quality of the transactions made, including those that are today being called into question by the initiation of criminal cases, according to the procedure for compliance with the law. ”
In the same spirit, the answer was given to the question of the actually renewable practice of attracting private intermediaries to the sale of property. “There is nothing wrong with the mediation institute,” said Kurakin. - And when we talk about the functioning of the ordinary real estate market, we turn to these intermediaries, we are used to them. And we do not always evaluate their activities with a minus sign. And we do not always consider those parasites who do things badly, but receive a large commission from us. On the contrary, we often see them as assistants who assist us in finding counterparties in a transaction ... As for the Ministry of Defense, these intermediaries can generally become our clients at the auction. And here we also do not invent anything new ... After all, the point is not that the mediator, having received from us any exclusive rights to sell the property, will be able to abuse them in order to satisfy his commercial interest. When selecting a partner, we, in fact, choose the technology of implementation and such contract terms that give us very high guarantees that the possibility of abuse will be excluded. ”
Naturally, such answers of a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Defense inevitably led the journalists to questions about the future of the discredited Oboronservis holding and its restructuring. The head of DIO again refrained from any negative assessments of this structure, controlled by the military department. But he said that in the current circumstances it is planned to conduct a rebranding of Oboronservis. Department staff are now working on this, primarily conducting a functional analysis: which one should be maintained in MO-controlled structures, and which one is better to get rid of?
As an example of an already determined perspective, the decision was given on the subholding Agroprom, which is part of Oboronservis. In its composition there are about 30 joint stock companies, organized on the site of the former military state farms. And if once there was a state defense order for the products of former state farms and it was purchased at fixed prices for the needs of the Armed Forces, over the past few years there was no state defense order. All agricultural products for the army were purchased on the open market. As a result, half of the subsidiaries of Agroprom ceased its business activities. Of these, two thirds are already in bankruptcy proceedings. Among those that formally continue their activities, literally only two joint-stock companies finished last year with a positive financial result. The question arises: why save them, if from a functional point of view, this activity is not needed by the Ministry of Defense? And after all there are significant assets. Plots, agricultural equipment, again real estate. And if you do not need a functional, then you need to get rid of it as soon as possible. In respect of the agroprom this decision was made.
Or another example. Inside Oboronservis there are three sub-holdings - Spetsremont, Aviaremont and Remvooruzhenie. Their functionality is certainly in demand by the Ministry of Defense. But should these companies be left as part of an outsourcing holding, if, while retaining control over them, military intelligence, in fact, is simultaneously in the same person, both the customer and the performers of these works? In the case of the failure of these sub-holdings to fulfill their obligations under the state defense order, the defense ministry’s claims must be made practically to itself. Since the only source of revenue for repair enterprises is the defense order, its own ministerial government contract. “That is, exposing penalties, we reduce the possibility to finance the costs of the implementation of the relevant works under the state contract,” Kurakin concluded. Therefore, today, work is underway to transfer these companies from Oboronservis to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. And in the future they are likely to become part of the relevant specialized mega holdings: USC, OAK, Rostec and others.
And yet there is a functional that will always be required by the Ministry of Defense. This refers to the engineering support of the funds of the Armed Forces - heat, water, electricity, sewage, maintenance, cleaning, etc. It is clear that to some extent it can be offered by the market. Well, for example, in Moscow there is no problem with obtaining services in the field of nutrition, cleaning or repair. So, the military department came to the conclusion that it was necessary to combine different approaches to serving the needs of military units. And through government agencies under the Ministry of Defense, and having joint-stock companies under the control of the ministry, and engaging companies in the open market on outsourcing.
Feeling that after the completion of the donation of a large number of military camps, the military leader intends to revive his commercial activities again, many specialized structures in the market, as they say, have taken the stand. The head of the Russian guild of managers and developers, Andrei Stepanenko, said in a meeting with journalists: “We must evaluate not only the social effect of this concept, but also the economic effect that we get. And first of all, the business will receive it - a huge amount of real estate, a lot of land assets that may be involved in commercial circulation ... ”These attractive prospects of the Russian guild of managers and developers and the Ministry of Defense are going to discuss 27 in Moscow at a joint conference in November.
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