IMI lawyer: Passing bill No. 11533 will harm journalists, activists and regular register users
Passing the current version of Bill No. 11533, which restricts access to state registers of real estate ownership licenses and the land cadastre, will harm not only the public control sector (journalists, civil society and human rights organizations), but also ordinary users of the registers.
Such an assessment of the bill was given by Volodymyr Zelenchuk, a lawyer at the Institute of Mass Information.
The explanatory note to the bill states that it was developed with the aim of “ensuring more security for the work of defense enterprises”.
The IMI lawyer believes that “ensuring more security for the work of defense enterprises” is being used as pretext for a proposal to shut down public access to information in the registers related to:
- the location of all real estate objects;
- cadastral numbers and data on the owners of all land plots.
“At the same time, heads of law enforcement agencies are given the right to request and receive information from register administrators about persons who were getting data from these registers. That is, in this case, the head of a law enforcement agency can obtain information, say, about a journalist who was interested in his assets even if there are no proceedings against the journalist,” Volodymyr Zelenchuk noted.
The lawyer cited the conclusion by the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, which states that even the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office points out that the amendments to Section VIII “Final and Transitional Provisions” of the Law of Ukraine “On State Registration of Real Estate Ownership Licenses and Their Encumbrances” propose to restrict access to data on the locations of real estate objects, all registered real estate ownership licenses and their encumbrances, as opposed to objects used or owned by enterprises related to national security and defense, as was specified in the idea of the draft bill.
In addition, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office says the specified amendments to Section VIII “Final and Transitional Provisions” of the Law of Ukraine “On the State Land Cadastre” should be reconciled with the idea of the draft bill and the data outlined in Part Two of Article 15 of this bill should not be published on the official website of the central executive body that implements state policy in the field of land relations regarding enterprises related to national security and defense.
“As for the draft bill, the Committee lists quite a few comments submitted by state bodies, therefore, unless its scope is narrowed down to only be applicable to information directly related to the sphere of defense, passing it will harm not only the public control sector, but also ordinary users of registers, who will be unable to get data on the location of their own real estate or cadastral information in the form of an extract,” says IMI lawyer Volodymyr Zelenchuk.
Bill No. 11533 was registered in the Verkhovna Rada on August 29, 2024. The bill was initiated by Servant of the People MPs Ihor Fris, Serhiy Demchenko, and Volodymyr Vatras.
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