Finland Blocks Property Sales to Russians

Finland's Ministry of Defence has rejected three permits for Russians to purchase property near the border. This decision affects two properties in the municipality of Ruokolahti and one in Kitee, in the southeastern part of Finland.

In Ruokolahti, one deal was made by an individual, and the other by a company. In Kitee, it was a private individual. However, both the individuals and the actual beneficiaries of the company are Russian citizens.

The negative decisions regarding these property purchases are based on the Property Transfer Act, which requires special permission. The Ministry of Defence justifies the refusal by arguing that the acquisition of the mentioned properties could be considered as obstructing national defence organization or surveillance and protection of territorial integrity.

Finland's Minister of Defence, Antti Häkkänen, pointed out that the deals had a clear connection to the Russian state administration and security agencies.

"In eastern Finland, one needs to be particularly cautious with property deals," said the Defence Minister.

Häkkänen further stated that all the deals involved land as the property in question.

The Finnish government has already started actively working on laws aimed at preventing Russians from making any property deals within the country. According to the Defence Minister, these initiatives should be introduced in the very near future.

"Over the winter, we will assess the possibility of a complete ban on these deals or significant additional restrictions," Häkkänen added.

It is also reported that Finland plans to conduct enhanced scrutiny of transactions made by Russians to avoid a situation like the one when it was discovered that Russians owned the Helsinki Shipyard, or something similar.

The new laws should grant officials the right to intervene if critical assets are attempted to be purchased by citizens from "inappropriate" countries. At the same time, certain exceptions are expected to exist, under which these transactions will still be possible.

As previously reported by The Gaze, there are suspicions in political and military circles in Finland that Russia may be behind the incident involving damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline, which connects the country to Estonia.