Foreign agents will be brought under one article – Newspaper Kommersant No. 230 (7431) dated 12/12/2022

The State Duma has prepared new amendments to the bills on amending the provisions of the Criminal Code (CC) and the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO), concerning the activities of foreign agents. The profile committee on legislation will consider them on Monday. The amendments propose to combine all “foreign agent” administrative structures into one article, and remove the sign of “malice” from the Criminal Code when evading the duties of a foreign agent. These proposals are designed to simplify the work of law enforcers, their author, United Russia Anatoly Vyborny, explained to Kommersant.

On December 12, the State Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation will reconsider amendments to bills on amending the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses regarding the activities of foreign agents. Recall that the drafts were prepared by members of the commissions of the Duma and the Federation Council on combating foreign interference in connection with the law “On Control over the Activities of Persons Under Foreign Influence” adopted in the summer (a document that summarizes the provisions of various laws governing the status of a foreign agent has entered into force December 1). They passed their first reading on 19 October.

The original version of the second reading was approved by the relevant committee on 7 November. Most of the amendments were of a technical nature, in particular, legislators everywhere removed the old wording “acting as a foreign agent”, replacing it with simply “foreign agent”. However, then the deputy head of the Duma Security Committee, Anatoly Vyborny from United Russia, decided to introduce additional amendments (Kommersant got acquainted with them).

First of all, the deputy suggested fixing in the Code of Administrative Offenses a single status of a foreign agent, regardless of the scope of his activity: earlier, various articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses provided for liability for failure to comply with the requirements of the legislation on foreign agents for different entities – public associations, foreign media, individuals, etc. Now the administrative compositions set out in the current art. 19.7.5–2 (non-submission of information by the NPO agent), Art. 19.7.5-4 (failure to provide information by an individual agent and failure to fulfill his obligation to indicate this status) and art. 19.34.1 (violation of the procedure for the activities of a foreign media agent) are combined into one article, which is presented in the new edition of Art. 19.34 entitled “Violation of the procedure for the activities of a foreign agent”.

In the combined art. 19.34 there will already be nine parts instead of the previous three. Among them, in particular, the implementation by a person not included in the register of foreign agents, activities as such; failure to provide the necessary information (or presentation of distorted information); failure to fulfill the obligation to report the presence of this status; production of materials and their distribution by an agent without indicating his status; violation of the procedure and terms of posting on the Internet for the publication of a report on their activities; failure to fulfill the obligation to establish a Russian legal entity; non-compliance with the restrictions provided for by the legislation on foreign agents and related to this status. Such differentiation is introduced in order to “make it more convenient for law enforcement officers, so that everything is clear,” Anatoly Vyborny explained to Kommersant. At the same time, the amounts of fines established by the current articles are basically preserved. One of the few exceptions is the toughening of liability for managers, founders and members of foreign agent organizations for distributing materials without specifying this status: the fine for this will increase from the current 5,000 to 10,000–30,000 rubles.

As for the amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, from its Art. 330.1 “Malicious evasion of the duties of a foreign agent” United Russia proposed to remove the sign of “malice”. According to Mr. Vyborny, this is due to “ambiguous practice of law enforcement.” At the same time, an addition is made to the article that criminal liability will occur after a person has been brought to administrative responsibility twice a year under the new Art. 19.34 Administrative Code. The punishment for these crimes will remain the same – up to two years in prison. In a separate part of Art. 330.1 it is proposed to deduct criminal liability for failure to fulfill the obligation to submit the documents necessary for inclusion in the register of foreign agents, committed by a person “carrying out the purposeful collection of information in the field of military activity” of Russia, which can be used against the security of the country. But the sanction here will remain the same – up to five years in prison.

The profile committee intends to support Anatoly Elected’s amendments, a source in the Duma told Kommersant.

Maria Makutina