About the sweet liberty of the agency

In the Kremlin, under the patronage of the deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Kiriyenko, a meeting on the preparation of amendments to the law on "foreign agents" is being prepared, RBC reports . The initiators were the Committee of Civil Initiatives Alexei Kudrin and the Human Rights Council.

The preliminary consent of Vladimir Putin has already been received to hold such a meeting, according to RBC sources. According to them, it should go before the end of the year. “We try to spend it as quickly as possible - before the president’s meeting with the HRC, which traditionally takes place in the second half of the year,” said the head of the council Mikhail Fedotov. However, it is still unknown who will take part in the meeting from the Kremlin.

As noted by the head of the HRC, the current formulations of the Law on "Foreign Agents" allows you to include everyone in a row.

“The concept of“ political activity ”is very wide. The law is interpreted arbitrarily, but arbitrariness is unacceptable. We cannot leave this wound unknown,” Fedotov emphasized. “The law should be written so that foreign states could not intervene in Russia, the president said when the bill was only developed. If we agree with our new proposals, then the list of NPOs -“ foreign agents ”will decrease every 20.”

During the law, 148 NPOs were included in the register of "foreign agents". 26 of them "stopped activities in connection with the liquidation." Another 18 NPOs are excluded from the register in connection with the "termination of the performance of a foreign agent."

Since the adoption of the law on "foreign agents", the requirements have repeatedly sounded more strictly to determine the concept of "political activity". On January 22, the Ministry of Justice published the amendments prepared by him to the Law on Non -Profit Organizations clarifying this concept .

A few days later, Russian human rights activists criticized the document . "As a result of the adoption of this bill, independent NPOs can be completely destroyed," the statement said. He was signed by the head of the Moscow Helsinki group Lyudmila Alekseeva, head of the Civil Promotion Committee Svetlana Gannushkin, head of the "Committee for Prevention of torture" Igor Kalyapin, one of the leaders of the Center "Memorial" Oleg Orlov, leader of the Lev Ponomarev and others rights movement and others.

According to human rights activists, in the bill of the Ministry of Justice, any activities of the NPO are declared political. Thus, a "total ban on financing the activities of NPOs from abroad is established, since any NPO will become a foreign agent." At the same time, NPOs will not be able to receive help from NGOs in Russia, "since Russian business will not finance NPOs engaged in" political activity. "

In May, the State Duma adopted the amendments of the Ministry of Justice by almost unchanged .