"Agents" will commit suicide

The Ministry of Justice Details the requirements for "NPO - foreign agents"

On the federal portal of draft regulatory legal acts, a draft order of the Ministry of Justice appeared “On the form and terms for the provision of NGO reporting to the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, performing the functions of a foreign agent”. Colleagues from RBC drew attention to this - although projects on the portal are placed for public discussion, the relevant departments do not particularly advertise them. Reviews for the project are proposed to be downloaded to the portal until September 1, although there will already be little to change from the “discussion”: the Ministry of Justice’s order only detailed the provisions of the laws from the “Package of the Deputy Vyatkin”, with which the past Duma made a civil society last December “in the development of constitutional amendments”.

In accordance with the new procedure, which the Ministry of Justice proposes to introduce, NPOs included in the list of “foreign agents” will have to report to the justice authorities not only for already conducted, but also for planned programs and events, indicating their goals, stages, sources of financing and the composition of the participants. After each event, the report on the same positions should also be immediately submitted - and the mismatch between the “plan” and “fact” according to this logic may become the basis for the cancellation of registration (i.e. liquidation) of the NPO.

In accordance with the draft order, which is not always used,

• “A message about the programs, other documents that are the basis for the events” will be supposed to be submitted annually no later than November 1 of the year previous the year in which the program will be carried out (events) ”;

• a report on the activities and personal composition of the governing bodies will be submitted once every six months ;

• And the report “On the goals of expenditure of funds and on the actual spending and use of funds and other property” - quarterly .

Member of the HRC, executive secretary of the human rights Council of St. Petersburg Natalia Evdokimova, whom we asked to comment on the Ministry of Justice’s document, believes that such a design will actually require “NPO-investment” to coordinate all their work with the bodies, and those “events” that for some reason do not like, they will actually be prohibited. Over a year in advance, it will be unrealistic to provide the personal composition of the participants in the “events”, therefore, “NPO-foreign” will have to be abandoned from most of their plans. The maintenance of the proposed reporting will require additional personnel and financial resources from them, which the majority of NPOs do not, unlike the bodies of justice, which the state will pay (from our taxes) additional rates for this routine-and-meaningful work.

According to the NPO -Foreign Agents Register, which is conducted by the Special expert Sergei Krivenko, as of August 1, 2021, 205 were on the list of the Ministry of Justice of these, but almost half of them had already stopped their activities and eliminated, that is, in fact this is Martyrologist.

Most of the liquidation occurred for 2015 and 2016, but the 2022nd, taking into account the new requirements of the Ministry of Justice, promises to become more “yield”.

This is not the last of the expected documents of the Ministry of Justice, which he has to publish laws from the Vyatkin Package. Previously, reporting was published for NPO - foreign agents, and ahead of the documents governing the reporting of “individuals - foreign agents”.

The Ministry of Justice experts will have to break their heads on how to combine these requirements with the constitutional status of individuals, that is, citizens of their country. But what can you do to protect the constitution from internal enemies!

Having got into this last list, it will also be “self -destructive”, but we will not tell them ways to tell them, otherwise the Roskomnadzor will not punish us for the description of the methods of suicide.

When the legislation on “foreign agents” was still fresh and not so confusing, the Constitutional Court on the complaint of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation Vladimir Lukin adopted a decision of April 8, 2014 No. 10-P, where he indicated that the status of a “foreign agent” should not discredit such NPOs compared to those that do not receive foreign financing. Today, at the legislative level, we see a rejection of this position of the Constitutional Court, in theory, mandatory for all state bodies. It would be better to formulate and support the experts of the Institute of Law and Public Policy to the Constitutional Court of the Constitutional Court, but they are not up to this now: the STI himself was included in the List of “Agents” a month ago.