The Constitutional Court criticized the mechanism for conducting prosecutorial inspections of NPOs

As stated in the resolution on the court’s website, human rights organizations appealed to the Constitutional Court with a complaint against three articles of the law “On the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation.” The applicants believed that the lack of clear regulations allows the supervisory authority to conduct inspections an unlimited number of times, as well as request any documents from NPOs at any time. According to the verdict of the Constitutional Court, “the controversial provisions of the law on the prosecutor’s office do not establish a clear time frame and allow inspectors to independently determine the deadlines for fulfilling their requirements.” “Thus, they make it possible to set objectively impossible tasks for NPOs, which, in the absence of criteria specifically established by law, cannot be verified on their merits in court. Failure to complete the relevant tasks within the time period established by the prosecutor entails administrative liability for the NPO. In this part, the provisions of the law “On the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation” do not comply with the Constitution,” the resolution says. Although the decision of the Constitutional Court speaks of the “special role” of the prosecutor’s office in ensuring the rule of law, it also lists the mandatory conditions for conducting inspections that must be observed in order to avoid abuse and illegal restrictions on the rights of organizations. According to the verdict, the inspection itself must have a motivation. In this case, the NPO being inspected must receive notification of the inspection, and upon its completion - about the presence or absence of identified facts of violation of the law. Prosecutors do not have the right to demand from an organization documents that are already at the disposal of state bodies, publicly available information and documents that the organization is not obliged to possess, the verdict says. In addition, inspections cannot be carried out repeatedly on the basis of the same motive, unless it is about eliminating previously identified violations. Having analyzed the practice of prosecutorial inspections, the Constitutional Court ordered that the law “On the Prosecutor’s Office” be amended, and before the amendments come into force, inspections should be guided by the same rules established by the law “On the protection of the rights of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs in the exercise of state control and municipal control.”