The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation stated that inspections of human rights NGOs are carried out to assess the compliance of their activities with the statutory goals and Russian legislation. reports this RIA Novosti .

The department added that when violations are detected, the Ministry of Justice applies “legal response measures established by law.” Previously, the Prosecutor General’s Office called inspections of NPOs “routine.”

Mass inspections of Russian NPOs began on March 21. One of the first inspections visited the headquarters of the Memorial Society in Moscow. In addition to employees of the Ministry of Justice, representatives of the prosecutor's office and the tax inspectorate participate in the inspections.

Human rights activists also complained that the checks were accompanied by the appearance of journalists from the NTV channel, who persistently tried to obtain information about foreign sources of funding. In order to escort journalists out, NGO employees even had to call the police.

According to the head of the human rights organization Agora, Pavel Chikov, over the past few days, 38 NGOs from 15 Russian regions have been subject to inspections.

In recent months, Russian authorities have shown increased interest in the activities of NGOs. In November 2012, the State Duma adopted a law on “foreign agents,” which obliges all non-profits funded from abroad and related to politics to register with the appropriate status.

However, since the adoption of the law, not a single NGO has been included in the list of foreign agents. A precedent was created by the Chuvash human rights organization “Shield and Sword,” which was rejected by the Ministry of Justice. The ministry's decisions were received favorably by the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, which considered that the Ministry of Justice was thus, within the framework of its powers, preventing illegal actions. Previously, the Ministry of Justice characterized the law on foreign agents as not repressive, but contrary to the spirit of Russian legislation on NPOs.

The Ministry of Justice explained the mass checks of human rights defenders