Carrying out privatization in the country is a relatively new legal institution in the country's legal system. In Russia, this activity is regulated by federal law, which establishes that the privatization of municipal property is a legal procedure for changing public property to private property, which is based on specially developed rules and laws. These rules stipulate all measures and methods for the termination of public property, and methods for the emergence of private property.
The law interprets privatization as a chargeable alienation into the ownership of private individuals (individuals) or organizations (legal) of municipal property.
In various sources, primarily in educational and scientific literature, the transfer of municipal property is considered as a legally guaranteed transfer of real estate and other property from the state form (or municipal) to private. At the same time, the law specifically stipulates that the subject of transfer may also be securities and other assets containing property rights.
The law stipulates that the privatization of municipal property, as well as state property, is carried out in accordance with the principles indicated below:
1) recognition of the equality of participants in the acquisition of municipal property and observance of the publicity and openness of the work of authorities in the field of privatization activities;
2) retribution, that is, levying a certain fee or transferring to the state property (of a municipality) the shares of an OJSC in whose authorized capital the privatized state property or property of the municipal entities is credited;
3) the independence of the institutions of power in resolving issues that affect the privatization of municipal property, and making decisions on these issues;
The Russian legislation, in part of which the privatization of municipal property is regulated, contains, in addition to the already mentioned federal law, other legal acts related to privatization issues. At the same time, the federal law specifically stipulates the condition that other acts regulating privatization, which are adopted at the regional level, may not contradict the federal law. Any provision on the privatization of municipal property should be exclusively agreed upon and should not exceed the authority of an entity in the implementation of privatization.
Legislation also clearly defines privatization methods. This list is exhaustive and cannot be interpreted or applied in any other way. Among these methods, the law provides for the following:
- change in ownership, mainly through the transformation of the UP into a public company;
- sale at auction;
- open sale of OAO assets;
- implementation through posting it on a special competition;
- sale of property outside the country (this method applies only to assets in which there is a share of state ownership) ;
- placement and conduct of operations for the sale of shares of a public company on the stock exchange;
- the sale of municipal property through its public offer or through sale without a price announcement;
- contribution of property to the authorized capital of JSC and business entities;
- sale of assets of OJSC based on the results of trust transactions;
Summarizing the aforesaid, it is possible to reduce all operations related to privatization methods to the conversion of unitary enterprises into OJSCs, their incorporation into authorized capital, sale through auctions and other forms of sale. In this case, regional peculiarities should be taken into account when conducting transactions on the privatization of property of municipalities.