The Prosecutor General corrected the president

Yuri Chaika announced new data on “foreign agents” among NGOs

The Prosecutor General Chaika reported to President Putin about the results of a massive audit of non -profit organizations (NPOs) and explained how many “foreign agents” among them. Representatives of NGOs believe that clarity from these explanations is no longer.

At the meeting of Yuri Chaika with Vladimir Putin, who took place on July 9 at the presidential residence of Novo-Ogarsevo, there were several noteworthy moments at once.
Firstly, the prosecutor general unveiled the exact number of NGOs, which, in his opinion, falling under the definition of a “foreign agent”. According to Chaika, by the fall of last year there were 215 such organizations in Russia, but after the relevant law came into force in November 193, they either suspended their political activity or abandoned foreign money. And only 22 NPOs “continued to function and receive funding from abroad”, refusing to register at the Ministry of Justice as “foreign agents”. True, the Prosecutor General did not list these organizations. The management of interaction with the media Prosecutor General, where The New Times turned, could not call “agents”, but they said that this list could be published “in the coming days”.
Secondly, the seagull gave new data on the financing of Russian NPOs: “From November last year to April of this year, non-profit organizations received as a whole (and they received foreign investment, 2226 non-profit organizations), 30.8 billion rubles were received.” At the same time, those 215 NPOs, the activities of which the Prosecutor General’s Office considered the political, have received about 6 billion rubles over the past three years.
These numbers are significantly lower than those that Putin was given on April 5 in an interview with the German television and radio company ARD. Then he stated that “654 non -governmental organizations that are engaged in domestic political activities are in force in the Russian Federation,” and “28 billion 300 million rubles were received on their accounts only four months after we adopt the relevant law - this is almost a billion dollars”. This “presidential billion” was very excited by representatives of the leading Russian NPOs, who even turned to Putin on April 11 with a request to publish a full list of 654 organizations that received an average of almost one and a half million dollars from abroad in four months. Now it turns out that the number of “political” NPOs has overestimated at least three times, and their total financing (including money from domestic sources) turned out to be almost five times less than, according to Putin, they received only from abroad.
Finally, thirdly, the Prosecutor General said that during the spring verification of NGOs, prosecutors "revealed a lot of violations of the rule of law." But in the proof of this “mass”, only two examples gave: 17 NPOs in violation of the Vienna Convention “financed through the embassies of foreign states” (apparently, these are just those who, according to the Putin’s definition of 2007, “jackaling the embassies”), and “some organizations were looking for various loopholes” - in particular, the Association of Agora and the Voice “had a completely extended network of the same ones as they were a completely extended network of the same They, with the name, structures in the constituent entities of the federation, themselves received funding, and then listed to everyone else. "
Representatives of the NGOs, already declared by the Prosecutor General of the “foreign agents”, admitted The New Times that Yuri Chaika “rather added fog than scattered him”.
“We can observe how the Mountain gave birth to a mouse: according to the results of a massive check, only 17 organizations“ grossly violating ”the law were found,” says Alexander Cherkasov, head of the Memorial human rights center. -And we are still concerned with the “Presidential billion”: it is still not clear what kind of rich NGOs that are driving this billion are. So far, all these are solid pronouns instead of nouns. And the “terrible danger”, which threatened the country from NGOs, still does not have a name and is clearly not outlined. This is still, one might say, a hidden threat-just “Star Wars, Episode 1”.
“We can talk about any figures, about any number of organizations, about any amount of funds received for any period, but until there is no list of who and how much, this information does not make any point,” agrees the head of the Human Rights Association of Agora Pavel Chikov. “Because there is no way to check and clarify this data.”
Moreover, some statements by Yuri Chaika, as social activists note, directly contradict the facts. “The Association“ Agora ”was established by three regional human rights organizations. That is, it is not us that we create something, but, on the contrary, regional organizations created our association, ”Pavel Chikov recalls Prosecutor General. The links of Yuri Chaika to violation of the Vienna Convention of diplomatic intercourse are equally unreasonable, according to him. “This convention has absolutely nothing to do with NGOs, since it regulates only the relations of states among themselves,” Chikov explains. - In Russia, there are at least a dozen embassies, which for 15 years now have the so -called grant programs. If the Russian government has any complaints about these programs, then he has every right to ban them. But to make claims to NGOs, which legally participate in legal activities and receive legal money for their legal work in the competition is the top of cynicism. ”

Photo: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool/Scanpix