Liquidation of NPOs will be demanded through the courts

Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said that the Ministry of Justice will ask the court to liquidate the Golos association if the non-profit organization (NPO) does not register as a foreign agent. In addition, he accused the Pirate Party, which was denied official status, of saying that the fact of its refusal was “much more important” than registration itself: according to him, the party simply does not want to comply with the requirements of the law.

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Executive Director of the Association "Voice" Liliya Shibanova

Photo: Kommersant / Vyacheslav Prokofiev / buy photo

Russian Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov

Photo: Kommersant / Dmitry Dukhanin / buy photo

Photo: Kommersant / Gennady Gulyaev / buy photo

According to Mr. Konovalov, the fine already handed down by the court to Golos confirms the validity of the ministry’s claims against this organization: “In the future, we can talk about liquidating the organization, in court, of course, if it does not want to comply with the requirements of the law.”

Let us remind you that in April the court fined Golos 300 thousand rubles, and the executive director of the association Liliya Shibanova 100 thousand rubles. The Golos representative insisted in court that the association does not engage in political activities, does not receive funding from abroad and, therefore, cannot be a foreign agent. The representative's arguments were confirmed by the testimony of witnesses who spoke in court and by statements of accounts.

At the same time, Golos, according to Deputy Executive Director Grigory Melkonyants, does not intend to cease its activities, but there is a possibility of closing it as a legal entity. “We declare that the Golos team does not intend to stop its work and there are no plans to curtail its activities. The Association continues to work actively: supporting public observation of elections and related services (for example, such as a hotline, “Map of Violations”, SMS-CEC and others), the creation of an all-Russian database of election commissions wikiuiki.org and other areas in the field of protecting voters’ rights ", the association said in a statement.

“Golos” intends to defend its innocence, including in the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

In addition, Mr. Konovalov spoke about the refusal to register the Pirate Party. He claims that this is due to her constant failure to comply with legal requirements. “I have a feeling that this is rather a principled position of the party - not to comply with those regulations that are recommended for everyone. Probably, it is so innovative, so far removed from our reality, that it is difficult for it to complete simple, rather primitive tasks,” he said. The minister added that “there were such examples when the very fact of refusal to register a party is much more important for applicants than the final result.”

According to him, most other parties that wish to register with the Ministry of Justice do not have problems complying with the rules.

The Pirate Party itself called the refusal to register “politically motivated.” Let us recall that the reason for the refusal in mid-January to “pirates” advocating the freedom of non-commercial exchange of information, the Ministry of Justice said was that piracy is a crime and does not correspond to the stated goals of the party.

Policy Department

The Ministry of Justice will not give up on “Voice”