Single-family villas stand in downtown areas and have been illegally built for several years. Journalists interviewed law enforcement agencies and were rejected.

CCTV News:There are two illegal villas in suifenhe city, Heilongjiang Province, which have stood in the downtown area since 2012, and no relevant department has supervised them for several years. After being reported, the investigation process was even more tortuous.

In suifenhe city, a well-known border trade city, Wusuli Street is a main road leading to the country, and Beihai Park along the way is also a good place for citizens’ daily leisure. On the north side of this main road, opposite to the artificial lake in the park, there are two magnificent single-family villas. However, what is less well known is that these two villas turned out to be illegal buildings.

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:In 2012, because the main bodies of the two houses had cracked, the government asked for a facade renovation along the street, and then he took the opportunity of the facade renovation to demolish and rebuild the houses.

Reporter:If he wants to demolish and rebuild, what kind of procedures will he have to perform according to some relevant regulations?

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:He may have to go to the relevant departments to do some formalities in development and reform, land, planning and housing construction.

Reporter:Did he do it then?

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:There was no application at that time.

Reporter:You didn’t go through any formalities?

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:This is the renovation of the facade, so there is no renovation procedure, which actually belongs to the renovation of the house by itself.

In the name of facade renovation, the owner of the villa did not perform any examination and approval procedures, and stripped off the original three houses and began to rebuild. Therefore, since 2012, two three-story villas, a two-story garage, and illegal buildings with a construction area of more than 3,000 square meters have stood in the downtown area of Suifenhe. Incredibly, before 2018, the relevant departments of land, planning, housing construction, urban management and so on turned a blind eye and no one investigated them.

Reporter:For such a long time, our relevant departments have not found it, nor have they said that they should investigate his illegal construction?

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:During the renovation of the facade, all the peripheries were surrounded. At that time, there should have been law enforcement officers. At that time, he said that the facade renovation was not in our department, but was approved by other relevant departments, so we did not investigate and deal with his facade renovation.

Reporter: At that time, it was because the enclosure blocked that from being seen.

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:Right.

Reporter:But after it was built, the two houses that were so big were still invisible.

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:No, it used to have a house with two or three floors. It’s just that the facade has been renovated. From our point of view, its facade has really changed, and then the effect is really better than the original.

Regardless of the renovation of the faç ade, the planning department has gone to the housing construction department and the urban comprehensive management law enforcement department, which have the management responsibility and authority for the construction project. The reporter tried to restore that for so many years, no one really asked about the illegal villa, but both units refused the reporter’s interview request.

The masses reported that the former suifenhe city Planning Bureau had filed an investigation.

However, paper can’t contain fire after all. In 2018, the two illegally built villas in Suifenhe were reported by the masses, and the former suifenhe city Planning Bureau began to file an investigation.

After investigation, it was found that the parties involved rebuilt three buildings without approval, of which two villas were illegally built from about 1,000 square meters registered in the original real estate license to about 2,000 square meters, nearly doubling the illegal expansion area, and the other garage was expanded from less than 400 square meters to more than 1,000 square meters, far exceeding the original construction area, which was illegal construction. In March, 2018, the former suifenhe city Urban and Rural Planning Administration issued a series of legal procedures, such as ordering a rectification notice and holding a hearing. After collective discussion, the bureau office decided to confiscate illegal buildings according to the provisions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Urban and Rural Planning Law. However, the owner of the villa thinks that he legally acquired the land and went through the planning and construction procedures, and approved the construction of 5,100 square meters of houses. It is not illegal to tear down the houses with legal procedures for reconstruction. Even if there are illegal places, the punishment is too heavy. Therefore, administrative reconsideration was submitted to the suifenhe city Municipal Government.

During the reconsideration, the reply of the Planning Bureau was not accepted, the office of the Municipal Government’s Administrative Reconsideration Committee revoked the penalty decision, and the suifenhe city Municipal People’s Government issued the revoked administrative reconsideration decision.

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:The legal department of the government considered these cancellations.

The reporter saw in the administrative reconsideration book made by the suifenhe city Municipal Government that the reasons for revoking the administrative penalty decision were not only that the Planning Bureau had "unclear qualitative identification" of the illegal construction, but also that "the relevant evidence was not submitted, and it was deemed that the collective discussion of the heads of administrative organs was not carried out when the penalty decision was made", and the decision book procedure made by the respondent was illegal. When the reporter looked through the file, it was clear that all aspects of administrative punishment had minutes of the meeting of the bureau office. When the reporter asked why, Zhang Enhong was vague about this.

The disposal of illegal villas under the rectification storm has attracted attention.

The administrative penalty decision was revoked, and the disposal of illegal villas returned to the starting point. The original planning bureau of Suifenhe had to re-open the case for investigation. But soon after, with the cancellation of the Planning Bureau for Institutional Reform, the investigation was terminated. Until April 2019, the state urgently carried out the clean-up and rectification of illegal villas, and Heilongjiang Province also required a comprehensive clean-up and investigation of villa project construction since 2003, and timely and accurately reported it.

In September 2019, Mudanjiang City, which belongs to Suifenhe, reported these two illegal buildings as illegal villas.

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:Mudanjiang City and the provincial capital all have a special illegal construction cleanup team, and the nature and disposal of each illegal villa will be reviewed and reported at different levels.

In October 2019, under the storm of renovation of illegal villas, suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau launched an investigation again, and according to the Provisional Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Assignment and Transfer of Urban State-owned Land Use Rights and the implementation measures of Heilongjiang Province, it issued a decision on administrative punishment to the parties involved in illegal villas, with a penalty of 191,124 yuan. After the news spread, it attracted the attention of all walks of life, and there were all kinds of speculations and discussions among ordinary people. Many people felt that a fine of more than 100,000 yuan was only nine Niu Yi hairs for those who could afford to live in villas, which was a bit much cry and little rain, and anticlimactic.

Suifenhe city explained that the party concerned had paid the fine on the same day, but this did not mean that the disposal of the illegally built villa had ended. The Natural Resources Bureau also issued a notice ordering rectification within a time limit.

Reporter:After the money is paid, does it mean that his villa is legal?

Zhang Enhong, Deputy Director of suifenhe city Natural Resources Bureau:This is not the case, because now the punishment is based on our country, and there is a special special action to clean up illegal villas in the province, and then there will be a standard for each illegal villa. He is now fined according to the standards of his superiors, and then another relevant functional department will ask him to handle and rectify.

After the reporter finished the interview, the Propaganda Department of Suifenhe Municipal Committee of Heilongjiang contacted the reporter and said: While the Suifenhe Municipal Committee and Municipal Government performed the administrative punishment procedure for the villa according to law, the Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection also initiated the accountability procedure for the lack of supervision in the early stage, which is currently under investigation.