"Operational Action Plan"

They came to the offices of Transparency International and Civic Assistance organizations with prosecutorial checks

They came to the offices of Transparency International and Civic Assistance organizations with prosecutorial checks

On Friday, January 30, employees of the Taganskaya inter-district prosecutor's office came to the office of the Russian branch of the international organization Transparency International, which is engaged in anti-corruption research. Almost the entire team at that time was in the Moscow region, where Transparency International is holding a "winter school" for students. On Monday, February 2, prosecutors demanded to submit statutory documents, documents disclosing sources of funding, information about events held, and media appearances.

There were only a secretary and an administrator in the office. The employees of the prosecutor's office politely introduced themselves, left a demand for Anton Pominov ( general director of the Russian branch. - Ed. ) to appear on Monday with documents and just as quietly left. The whole procedure took three and a half minutes,” Elena Panfilova, Vice President of Transparency International, told Novaya Gazeta. We have practically all the documents. It just so happened that we just did a bunch of research in English. Now we are trying to understand whether 500 pages should be translated. Most likely, we will attach an existing summary in Russian. So far, nothing draconian has happened. But maybe it will start happening on Monday.

There are enough reasons for sudden attention from the prosecutor's office. For example, in early December 2014, Transparency International published another "Corruption Perceptions Index", in which Russia shares 136th place with Iran, Cameroon, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon and Nigeria. Russian politicians reacted to the publication. Deputy Irina Yarovaya called this rating "politically engaged", and the head of the presidential administration, Sergei Ivanov, was "extremely skeptical" about it. In addition, in October 2014, Elena Panfilova, who previously headed the Russian branch of the organization, became Vice President of Transparency International.

Elena Panfilova herself believes that the reason for the check is more prosaic:

- The prosecutors did not say directly that this was a scheduled inspection, but dropped that two years had passed since the previous one. I suspect it's not malicious intent. After all, on the same day, January 30, they came to the Civic Assistance Committee with a check. The chairman of the committee, Svetlana Gannushkina, like Anton Pominov, is expected with documents on Monday - only at the Meshchanskaya Interdistrict Prosecutor's Office., With which we really have almost the same the same days were the checks in the spring of 2013. Apparently, there is a certain “plan of investigative measures” or “Google-alert” they rang.

Following an audit in 2013, Transparency International received a warning. The prosecutor's office considered that "the statutory tasks of the center and its actual activities testify to the participation of the foundation in shaping public opinion about the state policy pursued <...> and influencing the decision-making by the state authorities of Russia."

Transparency International disputed this warning.

“It seemed to us extremely important to try to prove in court that civil anti-corruption activities cannot be political,” says Panfilova. - What is the logic? Our activities are aimed at combating corruption. And the law says that political activity is activity aimed at changing state policy. And if the activity aimed at combating corruption is an activity aimed at changing public policy, then it turns out that public policy is ... corruption! In my opinion, this is wrong. So we didn't dispute the warning as much as we wanted to show that there are types of social activity that by no means can be called political.

Transparency International then reached the Constitutional Court, which issued a twofold definition. He dismissed the organization's complaint, but noted that the decisions of the prosecutor's office and lower courts could be challenged again in terms of determining political activity.