One and a half billion was spent "gift"

Funds related to Dmitry Medvedev first published reports on the Ministry of Justice's website

Non -profit funds “DAR”, “Gradislava”, “Sotsgosproekt”, and the Fund for supporting Winter Olympic species published short reports on the website of the Ministry of Justice. The documents contain data on the amounts of expenses. For example, “Dar” for 2016 spent 1.5 billion rubles. Sources of financing organizations are not detailed. Now the page of the Ministry of Justice site with NGO reports is not available, and the section of the section on NGOs reads: "Due to the active loading of reports, interruptions in the work of the site are possible."

Recall that after the publication of the investigation of the Corruption Fund dedicated to the alleged assets of Dmitry Medvedev, the Novaya correspondent tried to contact the funds associated with the Prime Minister. Despite the fact that the work of NPOs should have a socially oriented nature, we are faced with the inability to access their financial statements and information about organizations as a whole.

Anastasia Ivolga, administrator of the “Information transparency and accountability of Russian non -profit organizations” of the Russian branch of Transparency International, tells about the problems related to the transparency of the activities of NPOs and the use of charitable funds in corruption schemes.

Anastasia Ivolga

Transparency International

- What does the legislation say about the compulsory reporting of NPOs?

According to Federal Law No. 7 “On Non -Profit Organizations”, NPOs must submit to the Ministry of Justice reporting in three forms that imply information on the expenditure of funds, the activities of the Fund and foreign financing. In addition, they must also submit data on their property. The problem is that this law does not provide for the forms of such statements and consequences that funds will incur in case of failure to fulfill their obligations.

On the fact of NPOs, only reports on the spending of funds are submitted. In the event that a non -profit organization received funds or property in the amount of three million or more, or any money came from foreign citizens or state citizens, NPOs are obliged to submit such reports. If NPOs did not spend a penny even when financing in the amount of a billion rubles, it can submit reports in which only income articles are noted without specifying specific amounts.

- You mentioned that the Ministry of Justice should publish reports of NGOs. However, in March, the department deleted the archives of reports of non -profit organizations from its portal.

Back in 2010, the Ministry of Justice accepted the order according to which NPOs are obliged to publish his reports. In fact, NPOs can be transferred to the media, or post it on the Internet on their website, or publish it on the Ministry of Justice portal specially developed in 2010. Until now, many NPOs submit reports to the Ministry of Justice in paper form.

Theoretically, these organizations can omit the moment of public submission of their reporting due to the fact that no punishment is spelled out at the legislative level. Moreover, a non -profit organization can publish its reports in no one unknown regional print media with a thousand copies. Of course, all this information may be lost. But in accordance with the order, which was adopted in 2010, NPO reports should be stored in the public domain - it does not matter on the Internet or in paper media or on the portal of the Ministry of Justice - at least a year. That is, after the expiration of a period of one year, the Ministry of Justice has the absolute right to delete this reporting.

- Transparency International will monitor the situation with the activities of NGOs. Have you recorded cases of fraud on the part of non -profit organizations?

- Again, it is very difficult. We can suspect NGOs in some corruption schemes only when we see some unusual amounts on its balance sheet. NPO balance can be found through various data collection aggregators-a contour-focus or SPARK. You can also request the balance of the organization in Rosstat. But the problem is that non-profit organizations are so non-public that it is quite difficult to find out about the connection of any NPO with a specific person. This is rather a search process and a question of good luck.

Without data on any input points-information about the person to whom the fund is registered, or the incredible balance of a non-profit organization on the contour-focus, we cannot start research. I am sure that such a storage format for illegally acquired assets is probably more common ( through NPO - editing ). In reality, it is difficult to find those organizations that store these archives, and behind which there are some public officials.

- And can citizens submit a request to the Ministry of Justice?

- Theoretically, yes. They can do this using the Federal Law "On Ensuring Access to Information." According to this law, all departments must disclose the data they have. But the problem is that having encountered the situation of funds mentioned in the FBK investigation, the Ministry of Justice transferred the arrows to non -profit organizations themselves. Formally, the ministry confirmed the provision of data on time.

Natalia Perepelkina - especially for "New"