For the first time, the State Duma will deprive two deputies of their powers for absenteeism

The State Duma this week will prematurely deprive two deputies of their mandates – Vasily Vlasov (LDPR) and Vadim Belousov (A Just Russia – For Truth), two sources on Okhotny Ryad told Vedomosti. The Regulations Commission, of which Vlasov is a member, and the Competition Protection Committee, of which Belousov is a member, decided to contact the Ethics Commission to begin the procedure for the early resignation of two deputies, one of Vedomosti’s sources said.

Vlasov missed more than 60% of the commission’s meetings without good reason or warning; for example, during the 8th convocation, he was twice absent from commission meetings for more than 40 days in a row, Viktor Pinsky, head of the commission on regulations, told Vedomosti. The first deputy chairman of the committee for protection of competition, Igor Igoshin, confirmed that Belousov systematically does not attend its meetings.

According to the law on the status of senators and deputy of the State Duma, the powers of a deputy can be terminated early by the chamber on the initiative of his faction or committee/commission in case of failure to fulfill his duties for 30 or more calendar days. “If a person does not come to a meeting, this is a failure to fulfill his duties. Failure to fulfill duties is also the absence of meetings with one’s voters, said State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin at a meeting on October 12. “We must feel this responsibility.”

On Tuesday, October 31, meetings of the State Duma Commission on Ethics and the Commission on Mandatory Issues will take place, which will have to consider the decisions received from the Commission on Regulations and the Committee on Protection of Competition. If they recommend depriving Vlasov and Belousov of their mandates, then a Duma council will be held on the same day, and at the next plenary meeting, which could take place this week, their powers will be terminated, says Vedomosti’s source.

Vlasov said that he constantly works in the State Duma, and connected the question of depriving him of his mandate with the fact that he “raises uncomfortable questions.” The assistant to the leader of the LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, was first elected to the State Duma in 2016. In the last year, in Vlasov’s reception room it was possible to sign up as a volunteer for the PMC (searches were carried out there). Depriving this deputy of his powers looks like a way to remove him from the State Duma without formally involving law enforcement, says Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation.

Belousov was not available to journalists. In December 2018, the State Duma gave consent to the Prosecutor General’s Office to deprive him of immunity in connection with the initiation of a criminal case under Part 6 of Art. 290 of the Criminal Code (receiving a bribe on an especially large scale). Belousov is accused of receiving a bribe from a road construction holding company in the amount of more than 3.2 billion rubles from May 2010 to January 2014, together with the former governor of the Chelyabinsk region Mikhail Yurevich, acting as part of an organized group. for patronage in the distribution of government orders for road construction.

Last August, Belousov was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500 million rubles. In May 2023, the sentence was upheld. In relation to Belousov, the court verdict came into force, accordingly, this is a more compelling reason for depriving the deputy of his mandate, says political activist Garegin Mitin. In the case of Belousov, in fact, a conflict of statuses arose – a criminal and a State Duma deputy, he notes: “Perhaps, in order to protect the status of a deputy, they chose this basis for deprivation of powers.”

“The fact that they want to deprive Belousov of his mandate for absenteeism, and not for a criminal record, is strange: with the approval of his sentence in the appeal in May 2023, the last questions related to its entry into force disappeared, and the fact that the deputy is wanted did not interfere with depriving him of his mandate,” says political expert Oleg Zakharov. – If a conviction against a person who is a State Duma deputy comes into legal force, as stated in the law, “the powers of the deputy are terminated.” Moreover, in case of absenteeism of a deputy, “the powers may be terminated,” especially since the start of this procedure requires a decision of the faction or committee in which he is a member.”

In other words, it should have already led to the deprivation of Belousov’s mandate: “Moreover, the law gives the State Duma a month to terminate its powers – from the day such grounds appear or from the day they became known.” In Vlasov’s case, the issue is resolved by “the arithmetic of absenteeism” and “counting days of non-fulfillment of duties,” says Zakharov.