You're reading: Opposition afraid Ukraine will face land sales in 2013

The opposition said that land in Ukraine would be sold out in 2013.

“Why do billionaires invest money in deputy mandates, especially in the central Ukraine? They have two aims: to receive a deputy mandate, and prepare for land reform and land sales, which will 100% certainly start in 2013,” Verkhovna Rada Deputy Chairman, and one of the leaders of Batkivschyna Party Mykola Tomenko said at the press conference on Tuesday.

At the same time he said that the sale of the lands would start not from January 1, 2013, but for example, from February, but “it will surely start.”

According to Tomenko, such confidence is conformed by the signing by a law on creation of the State Land Bank by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

“I want to inform you and our citizens, those who passed their shares to the business entities, that these shares could be passed on the security of State Land Bank. And then cooperative shareholders will not see them any more,” he added.

Tomenko said every owner of the land shares could take a credit at this bank and to provide land shares in the form of the deposit.

“In fact this law creates a step to the civil war, because millions of people, who passed their shares, don’t know and don’t understand that they could lose them because of the possible deposit of the security at the State Land Market,” the deputy chairman said.

According to Tomenko, one more step is that at the sitting on Tuesday, parliament will vote for a resolution according to which the moratorium on land sales is not ended, but will last until the adoption of law on land trading.

“Dear friend, don’t you believe people that will assemble in November [at the parliament], of which two third aren’t the deputies, won’t want earn money and support the law on land trading? Certainly, they want this. I’m sure that the start of the land reform will be a key issue in November-December,” Tomenko stressed.