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- Not for show: Russia will introduce a new mechanism for monitoring residents' meetings
Not for show: Russia will introduce a new mechanism for monitoring residents' meetings
In Russia, a mechanism for electronic monitoring of residents' meetings will be created, the protocols of which will be recorded in the GIS housing and communal services system with the identification of each owner on the "State Services". Such a bill has been prepared in the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Communal Services. According to the estimates of the deputies, today about 50% of the protocols are forged. To solve the problem, management companies are proposed to prohibit the holding of meetings by polls and by absentee voting, as well as to provide them with the originals of their protocols. The Association of Management and Maintenance Organizations in the Housing Sector acknowledged that "organizations are forced to make some fictitious contributions of votes, since there is simply no other way to make decisions on important communal issues." Whether electronic control will help protect owners is discussed in the Izvestia article.
Why do they want to tighten control over residents' meetings?
In order to exclude mass forgery of minutes of meetings of homeowners, the State Duma proposes to abandon the in-person, absentee and in-person-absentee voting formats. The parliament proposes to leave only two options for the expression of will: using GIS housing and communal services with the identification of each owner's decision through Gosuslugi or through an information system created by regional authorities. In the latter case, the authorities will take over control of the meetings. As Izvestia found out, Svetlana Razvorotneva, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Communal Services, developed such a bill and sent it to the government for review.
— The falsification of minutes of general meetings is an epidemic throughout the country, which we cannot yet cope with. People are constantly complaining that they were voted for. Together with the Ministry of Construction, we have recently discussed various mechanisms to solve this problem. Now, in my opinion, we have reached an understanding," she explained to Izvestia. — The bottom line is that the fight against counterfeiting is possible through electronic control, when all voting will take place and recorded through online resources that allow user identification.
The bill establishes a clear voting algorithm. The initiator of the meeting sends a notification of its holding, after which the system generates a numbered bulletin in the prescribed form.
— People receive a notification through Gosuslugi about holding a meeting in their home and can vote online or fill out a ballot. After that, the protocol is formed automatically, and the owners receive notification of the results of their voting," the deputy explained.
In addition, regions are proposed to be given the right to create infrastructure to help the population hold online meetings, from providing office equipment to organizing a turnkey meeting. In the latter case, by the decision of the owners, the functions of the administrator can be assumed by a local government body or a government agency authorized by the region.
According to preliminary estimates, approximately 50% of the minutes of meetings today can be forged, according to the State Duma.
The notice of the general meeting of owners, posted in the GIS Housing and Communal Services, will also be sent to the unified portal of Gosuslug, which, as stated in the bill, will become "the main tool in the fight against fraud," according to the bill, which was reviewed by Izvestia.
"The owner of the premises who receives the message will vote in the system, without providing an opportunity to fake his "vote" in paper form," the explanatory note says.
The bill also grants owners the right to re—vote once, which can be done within 72 hours of the decision being made. The total duration of voting can be up to 90 days.
In addition, it is proposed to abandon the transfer of the original protocols to management companies, HOA and HBC, as well as their subsequent transfer for storage to the State Housing Inspectorate (GJI). According to the authors of the initiative, the protocols will be submitted to the GJI in electronic form, which will make it possible to abandon paper storage of documents in local governments. It was at the stage of transferring documents through intermediaries, the draft law notes, that falsifications of protocols often occurred.
Izvestia sent a request to the Ministry of Construction with a request to comment on the prospects of the bill.
Why are meeting minutes forged so often
As Izvestia found out, cases of forgery of minutes of meetings of homeowners occur quite often, and ordinary citizens turn out to be victims. For example, the editorial office had at its disposal documents on the controversial transfer of management of one of the apartment buildings in Moscow on Trade Union Street, which has been under the management of the Galaktika housing and construction cooperative since 1976 to another management company.
— In 2025, a group of initiative owners held a general meeting on changing the management organization to GBU Zhilishchnik Akademicheskiy District. The OSS protocol, which was not signed by all residents, was submitted to the Moscow Housing Inspectorate, which it approved. After this decision, Zhilishchnik was appointed a management company, but it does not actually manage the house, residents told Izvestia.
According to them, all work on the maintenance and repair of the house is still carried out by Galaktika's forces and at the expense of Galaktika, however, residents receive receipts for services from two organizations - Zhilishchnik and HBC Galaktika.
One of the residents said that she had received a court order to collect the charges of the "Zhilishchnik". After submitting objections, the document was canceled, but the debt to GBU continues to be displayed and exceeds 100 thousand rubles.
A resident of the Leningrad Region told Izvestia about another similar case. According to her, the current Lenoblingining management company allegedly forged the signatures of the owners in order to raise tariffs and impose additional services, including paying for the work of a passport officer and snow removal.
— Most of the homeowners did not vote, nevertheless, the ballots were filled out and signed for them, — she explained.
An ambiguous situation has developed in the Zaozerye microdistrict in Perm. As the townspeople told Izvestia, the owners of four apartment buildings decided to change the management company of the management company "MKD Asset" to the management company "Prestigious House", but when submitting documents to the IGZHN, it turned out that they had been beaten. The management company "MKD Asset" has already submitted a protocol to the IGJN, where, according to the residents, she allegedly signed for all the owners of the MKD (living and dead). The owners wrote statements about the falsification of ballots, but IGJN ignored them all. As a result, the apartment owners of all the houses filed a collective statement to the prosecutor's office about the forgery of the minutes of the general meeting of the owners of the premises in the MKD Asset Management Company.
Izvestia sent inquiries to the specified Criminal Code, as well as to the Moscow Housing Inspectorate.
Tatiana Gotsulenko, director of the Association of Management and Maintenance Organizations in the Housing Sector, believes that the norms proposed by the deputies do not deserve support.
— Firstly, I categorically disagree with the fact that most of the minutes of residents' meetings are forged. Although it is difficult to deny such cases, since we have very inert owners, and according to the Housing Code, a number of procedures require a decision by the owners' meeting. Therefore, in order to carry out some housework, it is necessary to adopt the minutes of the general meeting's decision," she explained.
According to her, sometimes organizations are forced to make some fictitious contributions of votes, since there is no other way to make decisions on important communal problems of the residents themselves.
She believes that it is wrong to leave only two ways of holding meetings — through GIS housing and communal services with identification on "State Services" or in regional information systems under the control of the authorities. In the first case, not all citizens have access to digital technologies and are integrated into the digital environment. In the second case, it will be necessary to create a separate government agency with an additional staff that will hold these meetings and will require additional financial costs, she noted.
Oleg Pavlov, the head of the Public Consumer Initiative, holds a different point of view.
"Due to the fact that a small number of citizens are informed about their housing rights, it would be good to have transparent control mechanisms that cannot be circumvented, as is often the case now, when decisions are made without the knowledge of tenants," he told Izvestia.
Therefore, according to him, the idea of online voting and the ability to adjust your decision deserves attention. At the same time, the expert believes that additional control by local governments or federal authorities may require additional resources.
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