Foreign agents were not allowed into the portal – Newspaper Kommersant No. 66 (7511) dated 04/17/2023

Over the weekend, the deadline for reporting by organizations and individuals included in the register of foreign agents expired – but they still failed to do so. Last year’s order of the Ministry of Justice requires foreign agents to upload documents to a special portal, which, however, has not yet been created. In the absence of official clarifications from the department, foreign agents publish reports as before, on social networks. The Ministry of Justice told Kommersant that the service would be ready only by the end of the year, and before that, foreign agents could send paper documents by mail.

Recall that in December 2022, the law “On Control over the Activities of Persons Under Foreign Influence” came into force. It consolidated all legal acts relating to the activities of foreign agents and established a single register for all holders of the status. In addition, the procedure and form of reporting have changed significantly. According to the order of the Ministry of Justice No. 304, foreign agents must report on their activities in the second half of 2022 no later than April 15, 2023. And Appendix No. 2 to this document states that “reports on the activities of a foreign agent are posted on the information resources of the Ministry of Justice of Russia on the Internet, intended for posting reports.” However, there is still no such resource on the website of the Ministry of Justice. At the same time, the law requires that one of the report forms – OIA001 – be uploaded to it without fail.

Novosibirsk journalist Pyotr Manyakhin (included in the register of foreign agents) told Kommersant that he had sent a request to the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for clarification on how to act in the circumstances. So far, he has not received a response from the department. “When publishing, I acted according to the old rules that were before December,” the journalist said. “I published the report on social networks. Just in case, I posted the report on VKontakte, so that you don’t even need to use VPN services to access information.” Mr. Manyakhin noted that this is “not the first such situation.” According to him, even in the old rules, the Ministry of Justice provided for the possibility to submit all reports in electronic form, but in fact it was impossible to do this: “The Ministry said: since there is no technical possibility, send everything by mail or bring it yourself. But now the OIA001 form must be sent by mail and published through this service without fail – but there is no service.

Media lawyer, director of the Media Rights Protection Center (included in the register of foreign agents) Galina Arapova (also included in the register of foreign agents) suggests that in the conditions of the actual unavailability of the portal, foreign agents can either “submit reports for publication in the media – but hardly anyone some of the editors want to publish it, or publish it on the Internet, as was done in the past.”

Kommersant sent a request to the press service of the Ministry of Justice. The agency replied that “work is currently underway to create a platform for posting reports of foreign agents”; it should earn in December 2023. “At the same time, Order No. 304 established that the reports of foreign agents can be submitted to the Russian Ministry of Justice in person or in the form of a postal item with a description of the attachment,” the department explained. Separately, the Ministry of Justice noted that “no legal response measures were applied to foreign agents for not posting reports on the Internet.”

Polina Yachmennikova