In October, Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund said that it had found a private dacha in the Leningrad region in the closed fence area near the border with Finland, where the Land Code of the Russian Federation permits only engineering and safety communications. The Fund sent a written request to the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office to clarify the situation. Today Navalny reports that the Fund lawyers have received the answer, stating that everything was legal: there really was a private dacha, while its wired fences, cameras and signs "Mines!" and "Stop! Exclusion zone! No trespassing!" were meant for protection from "wild animals on the roads."

"The FSB and Border Guards did not remove the dacha located behind the fence, and control-track stripe... They removed the border," says Navalny.

As the Fund found out before, the property behind a fence belongs to the FSB colonel-general, the deputy chief of the Border Service of the FSB, Nikolay Kozik, who is directly responsible for the protection of the state border. The Chief Military Prosecutor's Office in its response did not deny this fact, noting that the private plot of 6600 square meters is located 4 km from the border of Russia and Finland on agricultural land where "construction of dachas is permitted". 

Moreover, the prosecutor's office said that the dacha area was indeed bought by Kozik in May 2014 from a previous owner on the basis of the contract of sale in accordance with Russian law.

"So all the locals, who know perfectly well that this is actually the border fence, now have every right to go inside the perimeter, picking mushrooms and berries, on the basis of such a response. The main thing to fear is a large number of wild animals that fence was constructed to fend off," sums up the head of the Fund.

Upon the Fund's request, the Prosecutor of the Leningrad Region is currently checking the legality of the transfer of the border land plot to the category, permitting dacha construction. 

Last fall the Fund also announced that there was an illegal block of the coastline in the Uymahuoneenlahti bay in the Leningrad region, where, according to the Fund, businessman Boris Rotenberg bought a land plot. Rotenberg along with his elder brother Arkady is considered a childhood friend of the Russian president.