"Extremist lists" will now be maintained by the Ministry of Justice

In the spring of 2008, a technical law related to the functions of Rosregistration was adopted and on May 6 came into force. According to it, several existing laws were amended, which allowed a number of functions to be carried out not by the “organ of justice” (Ministry of Justice), as was previously enshrined in laws, but by the “federal state registration authority” (Rosregistration). Only as a result of the adoption of this law, the FRS received, in particular, the functions provided for by the law "On countering extremist activity", that is, the obligation to maintain a list of extremist organizations and the obligation to monitor any organizations for signs of extremism, including the right of the FRS to issue warnings and file lawsuits about their elimination or prohibition. Thus, the technical error that existed since 2004, which we have repeatedly written about, was finally eliminated. Recall that the conflict was that during the reorganization of the system of federal executive bodies in 2004, when developing regulations, the Ministry of Justice lost the function of maintaining federal lists of extremist materials and organizations, while Rosregistration did not acquire it. The function of maintaining a register of extremist materials was entrusted to the Fed by presidential decree in May 2006, but the register of extremist organizations was once again forgotten. This gap was filled by the May law that came into force.

However, in fact, he acted only a week. Already on May 12, 2008, the new President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree approving the next changes in the structure of federal executive bodies. According to it, in particular, the functions associated with the registration of political, public and other non-profit organizations (and, according to the current logic of the law, the functions of maintaining registers of extremist organizations and materials) were returned to the Ministry of Justice. Rosregistration was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economic Development with the preservation of registration functions for commercial transactions. Moreover, it is assumed that before October 1, 2008, a plan will be developed to abolish the department altogether.

In practice, this means that since mid-May the activity of maintaining the lists has been practically frozen: Rosregistration has already stopped it, and the Ministry of Justice has not yet started (this can be seen at least from the cessation of updating the federal list of extremist materials, which has not been updated since the beginning of June 2008. (cf. updates to the unofficial part of the list maintained by the SOVA Center )

However, it should be noted that reference information related to the work of maintaining lists has already been transferred to the official website of the Ministry of Justice of Russia - from the beginning of July it is available in the "Activities in the field of non-profit associations" section.

From July 7, 2008 in this section are available:

• federal list of extremist materials ;

• a list of public and religious associations, other non-profit organizations in respect of which a court has made a final decision to liquidate or ban activities on the grounds provided for by the Federal Law "On Counteracting Extremist Activity";

• a list of public and religious associations whose activities have been suspended due to their extremist activities.