Simplified Corrupt Construction - 8

Baku/14.04.22/Turan: In December 2015, the director of the Turan News Agency, Mehman Aliyev, began the fight to prevent corruption in the field of individual housing construction. The problem was acute and covered the whole country. Executive officials everywhere extorted bribes from citizens for building permits. The legislation itself included vague wording, broad interpretations, which opened the way for voluntarism and corruption, violation of the social rights of citizens, causing them moral damage.

“I won't go into details. Following the links to the articles, the reader can trace the history of this struggle, behind which there was correspondence, negotiations with various officials,” Aliyev said.

Уведомительное разрешение в интерпретации исполнительной власти

Недошедшее письмо президенту

Пираллахи территория произвола

Individual building is under the pressure of corruption

Simplified corrupt construction

Simplified corrupt construction-3

Simplified corrupt construction-4

Issuance of Permit to Operate Some of Construction Projects Simplified

Simplified corrupt construction - 5

Несмотря на антикоррупционные указы, без взяток дом не построить

Simplified corruption construction-6

Simplified Corruptive Construction -7

As a result of this struggle, breaking the resistance of the bureaucracy, significant changes were made to the Code of Construction and Architecture, clarifications to the regulations. These changes had a significant impact on the increase in the rating of Azerbaijan in the international Doing Business Index for 2018, when the country ranked 25th, and in terms of building permits it increased from 125th to 65th place.

“Everything seemed to be in order in this area, although there were separate signals of abuse, to which we responded by helping citizens. However, recently I again found out from personal experience that local executive authorities, although not on the same scale, are again abusing their powers, defined by the urban planning code,” Aliyev said.

On March 29 this year, Aliyev decided to submit a list of documents for the construction of a house with a living area of ​​82 sq. m. to the Executive Power of the Khazar region.

One comrade, who recently also applied to the executive branch with a notification about the construction of a house, advised Aliyev to negotiate with the local authorities. In response, Aliyev noted that “I could never negotiate with the authorities, so I decided to go to the Executive Power in private, like an ordinary developer.” The director of the agency never introduces himself as a journalist and does not indicate his place of work when it comes to him personally. He took the necessary documents: an application, a project of a house drawn up by a licensed company in three copies, a copy of the land plot extract, a copy of an identity card.

What violations were recorded at the time of submission of documents:

1. Copies are accepted in a notarized form, although the Urban Planning and Construction Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan (UPCC) regulates the provision of a simple copy without certification. Aliyev spent extra time going to the notary and wasted money on fees. What for?

2. Tahira Rzayeva, head of the Department for Work with Documents and Appeals of Citizens of the Executive Office, who accepted the documents, said that the answer would be provided within 15 days. Aliyev corrected that, according to the UPCC, a maximum of 10 days was allotted.

3. The documents were accepted without registration and the notice of registration of the submitted documents was not delivered. The next day, Aliyev returned and obtained a note on his application that the documents were accepted on March 29, 2022.

“As I was promised, on the 15th day, an employee of the  Executive Power called and said that I was denied construction and offered to come to the Executive Power and pick up the refusal letter. On April 13, I came to the Executive Power, where they handed me a letter of refusal to build on the basis of a violation of Article 69.5. construction) when drawing up a house plan. The letter was signed by Elshan Gurbanov, the first deputy head of the executive power of the Khazar region,” Aliyev said.

Firstly, it should be noted that all comments are not substantiated and are reflected in the project, the intermediate distance is maintained in accordance with the UPCC - 0.3 m from the height of the wall.

The wording of the waiver is vague and does not meet the requirements of Article 80.4. UPCC: "If there are comments, these comments must be substantiated by references to regulatory legal acts and a clear indication of their violating requirements."

The developer was not given any clarifications, noting that this is not required by law. They only pointed out that the intermediate distance was not in accordance with Article 69.5.2-1. “I pointed out the intermediate distances indicated in the project, their compliance with the standards. But the argument was not accepted. But then the question arises of how changes can be made if the executive branch cannot substantiate the claims in detail. According to the idea, the Executive Power should invite the architect, point out to him specific claims based on the project, so that he knows how to correct the error, if any. But there is no such procedure and no such proposals followed. For the entire time the project was in the Executive Power, the developer was not invited for clarification and to resolve existing issues. I may be told that they are too busy and overloaded. But I was three times in Executive Power around and inside is empty, there are no visitors.

It should also be noted that on March 5, 2019, President Ilham Aliyev signed the Law on Amendments to the SSC. In particular, it states that in Article 75.5.2, 5 days are allotted for the examination of a project that does not require a permit.

“All this creates the impression of selfish actions of representatives of the Executive Power. It is difficult to explain it otherwise. I was especially convinced of this on my way to work. Evidence of the UPCC violations is littered on both sides of the Zagulba-Baku highway. The question arises: Either the Executive Power is not capable of monitoring compliance with the UPCC, or it received bribes and gave the go-ahead for construction at the discretion and desire of the developer. In both cases, violation of laws with a corruption component. Such, to put it mildly, deviations are observed in other areas. They talk about a special situation in the Absheron region,” Aliyev noted.

In his previous investigations, in the list of proposals, the director of Turan recommended that the issue of construction be completely removed from the jurisdiction of the head of the executive authorities and transferred to “ASAN Xidmət” or the State Service for Property Issues  (SSPI) under the Ministry of Economy. This wave is logical. The right to own a land plot and a house is issued by the SSPI. It also takes care of the house. It would also be necessary to further simplify both the permitting (abuses are much higher here) and the notification systems of construction in order to minimize the conditions for abuses and corruption.

“By the way, I decided to get acquainted with the UUCC  again. I turned to the website of the State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture. There was an empty code for 2012 and two legislative changes for 2019. I called the committee and asked why there is no updated UPCC on the site. This is actually the constitution of the committee, on which all activities are based. They acknowledged the mistake and promised to fix it. Let's see,” Mehman Aliyev said.—0—