The Zyuzinsky District Court of Moscow received materials from an administrative case under the article on the absence of the "foreign agent" marking (Part 4 of Article 19.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) against journalist Arkady Babchenko. Mediazona drew attention to the case file in the court's database.
The date of the hearing on the case has not yet been set. What posts exactly the journalist is accused of is not yet known.
Babchenko was added to the register of "foreign agents" on April 7. The Ministry of Justice justified its decision by saying that the journalist "was collecting funds in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
Babchenko is a journalist who left Russia in 2017 out of fear for his safety after a post about the crash of a Russian Tu-154 plane en route to Syria. In 2018, the Security Service of Ukraine staged the murder of the journalist. According to Babchenko, this was done to identify the masterminds of an assassination attempt on him, the traces of which led to Russia.
In January 2023, Babchenko was put on the wanted list. In 2020, his name appeared on the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring with an "asterisk" - which indicates that a case was opened under the "terrorist" article.
The legislation on "foreign agents" is becoming stricter every year. On December 1, 2022, the law "On control over the activities of persons under foreign influence" came into force, as well as numerous legislative amendments to the "foreign agent" regulation. You can read about the list of "affiliated persons", new registers and other innovations in the law on "foreign agents" in the analysis of OVD-Info .
In addition, Vladimir Putin signed a law on imprisonment for up to five years for “foreign agents” who were held accountable twice in one year for violating the procedure for the activities of a “foreign agent” (Article 19.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).
In the fall of 2021, OVD-Info launched the Inoteka project. We study the practice of applying laws on "foreign agents", talk about their impact on civil society and specific people, initiate discussions with experts and propose ways of possible changes. In December 2021, together with the Center for the Protection of Media Rights, we began providing legal support to people and organizations that ended up on the registers of "foreign agents".