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Upper House passes bill that administers fines to landlords for renting to illegal tenants

MOSCOW, December 18. /ITAR-TASS/. The Upper House of the Russian parliament on Wednesday has approved d a bill that envisages punishment to landlords who register crowds of illegal immigrants in their apartments known as" inflatable".

The bill has practically banned illegal registration of citizens who provide false information about themselves or produce false documents in order to get registered in an apartment without the landlord’s intention to rent it to someone to live in.

Under the bill Russian citizens and foreigners registered in such "overcrowded" apartments will be fined from 100,000 to 500,000 roubles or be sentenced to forced labor for a term of up to three years or imprisoned for the same term.

The bill also envisages administrative punishment to tenants without passports who may be fined from 2, 000 to 3,000 roubles in regions and from 3,000 to 5,000 roubles in Moscow and St. Petersburg; juridical entities implicated in "apartment" offences face fines ranging from 250,000 to 750,000 roubles in regions and from 300,000 to 800,000 roubles in Moscow and St.Petersburg.

The bill stipulates that a tenant who moves into an apartment is to get registered within 90 days since the tenant's arrival. After a tenant is registered in a certain region such a tenant is not obliged to inform about his movements within the territory where he was registered as staying permanently.

If a legitimate owner of an apartment registered there permanently has close relatives who live in the same place, the relatives are relieved of compulsory registration, the bill said.

Thousands of the so -called "inflatable houses”, where hundreds of thousands of illegal tenants stay, are found out annually. None of the illegal tenants is actually planning to settle in an apartment where they were registered, while their real home addresses remain unknown. In 2011 alone a total of 6,400 homes were found out in which as many as 300,000 illegal tenants were registered.

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