Customs ordered to share food and toys

The State Duma adopted amendments to the legislation, expanding the list of confiscated goods that can be donated to social services, schools, hospitals and other government organizations. The list included food in factory packaging, household appliances, children’s products, “technical means of rehabilitation.” The amendments included the possibility of transferring goods to private philanthropists, which is now prohibited, but the final document included only one structure – the All-Russian People’s Front.

Draft amendments to art. 325 of the law “On Customs Regulation in the Russian Federation” was submitted to the State Duma in March by a group of deputies (including Oleg Leonov, deputy chairman of the committee for the development of civil society, and Artem Metelev, head of the committee on youth policy). Now the Federal Customs Service (FTS) has the right to donate a number of goods to schools, kindergartens, hospitals, social security agencies and other state organizations free of charge. Among them, for example, medical devices, baby food, perishable foods, clothes and shoes. The parliamentarians proposed to supplement the list with children’s goods, books, food in the factory packaging “with an unexpired shelf life”, “technical means of rehabilitation” and household appliances.

In the explanatory note, the authors refer to the statistics of Rosstat about 17.8 million citizens of the Russian Federation with incomes “below the subsistence level” and remind that customs has the right to transfer goods free of charge. According to the Federal Customs Service, in 2020, the service registered 20.5 thousand confiscated consignments worth more than 8.5 billion rubles, and in the first half of 2021 – 7.4 thousand consignments worth 5.2 billion rubles. In the first reading of the bill, it was proposed to extend the mechanism for the transfer of goods also to private charitable organizations (now this is prohibited). The legislators instructed the government of the Russian Federation to form the list of organizations, emphasizing that such a practice would contribute to the achievement of the goals of the state program of social support for Russian citizens. However, the government of the Russian Federation did not understand on the basis of what criteria such a list should be compiled, as well as in principle they expressed doubts about this idea (in a response to the project). As a result, by the third reading, the document retained the possibility of gratuitous transfer of goods to only one new organization – the All-Russian People’s Front (ONF). On November 23, the law was adopted by the State Duma in final reading; The document will enter into force 30 days after publication.

The head of the executive committee of the ONF, Mikhail Kuznetsov, says that back in the summer of 2021, his organization announced the need to transfer the confiscation to charitable NGOs. “Now, when huge amounts of humanitarian aid are needed for the residents of Donbass and the fighters on the front line, the destruction of vital things should not be allowed,” Mr. Kuznetsov added.

Yulia Nazarova, President of the Rus Food Bank Charitable Foundation, calls the amendments “very important.” According to her, now in the Russian Federation 17 million tons of food waste are disposed of annually, the state spends up to 160 million rubles only on storing food at customs. in year. At the same time, she adds, foundations and other NGOs have long been trying to find a “systemic solution to support the needy and refugees.” The possibility of transferring goods not to all philanthropists, but to one ONF does not bother the expert: “It looks like a pilot. After all, there are risks with food – volume, different shelf life. We also need to work out an algorithm for transportation and reporting.”

“Interaction between beneficiaries and the state does not always happen directly. In some cases, the state acts through intermediaries,” says Konstantin Vorobyov, a lawyer for the Need Help Foundation. As an example, he cites the Presidential Grants Fund, the Circle of Kindness Fund, and the same ONF. “There is a convenient mechanism for the state to support NGOs and citizens. The property is transferred to the foundation, which is responsible for the further intended use. It can be assumed that the transfer of goods confiscated by customs is the same story, and the ONF plays the role of an intermediary pursuing state interests,” the lawyer adds.

Alexander Voronov